One of the great tragedies of this century has been the widespread addiction of large numbers of people to tobacco. An enormously profitable commercial enterprise, the production and marketing of cigarettes now affects a significant fraction of all the people on the planet. Many cigarette smokers are now dying of lung cancer, so it is… Read More »
As I get older, cancer kills more and more of my friends and family. Lung cancer is my particular nemesis. My brother died of lung cancer a few years ago, my closest college friend last year. Unlike breast cancer, which we cannot prevent because we do not know its cause (and the government continues to… Read More »
For one searing day this week I thought I had cancer. As it turns out, I don’t, at least not yet. In the days since, I have been thinking a lot about cancer. I am at that disturbing age — the mid-fifties — where my friends are beginning to fall victim to cancer’s cruel summons,… Read More »
A very important category of cancer-causing mutations do their mischief at the very beginning of the cell division process. These cancer-causing genes, called oncogenes, trick the cell into deciding that it is time to divide, when in fact it is not. It has been clear for several years that one way to attack cancer would… Read More »
Thousands of cancer patients are clamoring this week to be among the 30 or so enrolled in a new and controversial trial designed to seek an answer to this question. One of the most exciting and frustrating things about watching a developing science story like this one is that you can’t flip ahead and read… Read More »
This month the Food and Drug Administration released a long-awaited draft report on the safety of a controversial chemical used to line the metal interior of canned foods and to make plastic bottles shatterproof. Called bisphenol A or simply BPA, the chemical has been banned from use in baby bottles in Canada, and legislation… Read More »
Since the mid-1990s researchers have been tantalized by the prospect of curing cancer with adenovirus, a common cold virus. Adenovirus is able to infect human cells quite effectively, because an adenovirus gene called E1B inactivates the human cells watchdog gene p53, a defense against infection that detects foreign DNA and signals the body to remove… Read More »
This was the year my friends got cancer. Carleen, who ran our household with love and efficiency, died of cancer. Vicki, Chip, Tom, and Mick all went under the knife and survive, but cancer is still very much part of their days, and mine. So I watch with considerable excitement the parade of promising cancer… Read More »
It is hard to read about new cures for cancer. Time and again our hopes are dashed by a dramatic announcement of a therapy that works in laboratory mice, only to fail miserably in human trials. Sometimes, however, the story turns around, and the failed approach turns up a winner after all. This week we… Read More »
Science is an organized way of asking questions. Unfortunately, however, science doesn’t always give you the answer you want to hear. That was never more true than last week, when two rigorous studies involving thousands of people failed to find any protection from colon cancer by eating low-fat, high-fiber foods. For most of my adult… Read More »
People aren’t supposed to survive metastatic colon cancer. Once the cancer progresses to this terminal stage, tumor cells from the colon spread rapidly throughout the body, with death the certain result. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than of surviving, once the cancer metastasizes. Thus it was with considerable delight that cancer… Read More »
