‘Everything’ Cures Cancer
The digital generation grew up hearing “everything causes cancer.” The baby-boomer
saying avoided all argumentation that would even ask the requisite question: So why
worry? But simple investigations could have saved many who have prematurely passed
as a result of such disregard. It’s now couch-knowledge that half of US citizens will likely
get cancer, and if some are still indifferent to the ‘causes’, others are more interested
than ever.
In 2003, the World Health Organization
predicted that the rate of cancer would rise
to 50% by 2020; last year, British medical
journal The Lancet added 10% to that figure
by 2030. Yet, while breast, bowel, cervical,
liver, and other cancers rates are soaring,
cancer survival rates are nevertheless on the
rise.
Cancer-survivor
campaigns,
blogs, Facebook banner
and
many
ethicists
have
intrepidly pointed fingers at the actual
causes of cancer. Not only has this helped
increase preventive strategies and boost
survival rates, but it has also clearly shifted
the common mentality about the culprits
and ‘cures’ of cancer. The antithetical
rhetoric is in effect: today, ‘everything cures
cancer’. No doubt, some of the reasons for
this reversed mentality are emotionally swelled by deadly statistics, but the
contemporary result of some transparency of cancer’s causes and cures is a revitalizing
subject and social obligation.