What Is Cancer? What Causes Cancer?

Cancer is a class of diseases characterized by out-of-control cell growth. There are over 100 different types of cancer, and each is classified by the type of cell that is initially affected.

Cancer harms the body when damaged cells divide uncontrollably to form lumps or masses of tissue called tumors (except in the case of leukemia where cancer prohibits normal blood function by abnormal cell division in the blood stream). Tumors can grow and interfere with the digestive, nervous, and circulatory systems, and they can release hormones that alter body function. Tumors that stay in one spot and demonstrate limited growth are generally considered to be benign. More dangerous, or malignant, tumors form when two things occur:

1. a cancerous cell manages to move throughout the body using the blood or lymph systems, destroying healthy tissue in a process called invasion
2. that cell manages to divide and grow, making new blood vessels to feed itself in a process called angiogenesis.

When a tumor successfully spreads to other parts of the body and grows, invading and destroying other healthy tissues, it is said to have metastasized. This process itself is called metastasis, and the result is a serious condition that is very difficult to treat.

In 2007, cancer claimed the lives of about 7.6 million people in the world. Physicians and researchers who specialize in the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer are called oncologists.

What causes cancer?

Cancer is ultimately the result of cells that uncontrollably grow and do not die. Normal cells in the body follow an orderly path of growth, division, and death. Programmed cell death is called apoptosis, and when this process breaks down, cancer begins to form. Unlike regular cells, cancer cells do not experience programmatic death and instead continue to grow and divide. This leads to a mass of abnormal cells that grows out of control.

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We Must Fight!

In case you were asleep and not keeping up with the news, or just keeping tabs on the tabloids, The United States Preventive Services Task Force said Monday that women should start regular breast cancer screening at age 50, not 40, and that doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts on a regular basis.

We must fight!

As a breast cancer survivor, and a cartoonista/activista (yes I am) who wrote a graphic memoir about surviving breast cancer, and someone who's travelled all over the world talking to women who've had breast cancer and survived it because they caught it earlier before it was too late, I couldn't disagree more. There has been a consistent reduction in the rates of death from breast cancer in every country-including the United States-that has instituted a regular screening program.

We must fight.

Mammograms, while not perfect, do detect breast cancer. If you catch breast cancer early, you have a 98% survival rate. If you don't test yourself until you're 50 - then you risk receiving a later diagnosis, which could lead to death. To be blunt: it could kill you. A higher death rate from breast cancer is unacceptable in the United States of America.

We must fight.

More alarming, 80% of Women find breast cancer themselves, yet the USPSTF urges doctors to stop teaching women how to give themselves a self-exam. Another stark example of how incredibly irresponsible the USPSTF is, and how they are endangering the lives of every woman in America.

We must fight.

Dr Larry Norton, Breast Cancer Research Foundation Scientific Director; Chairman, BCRF Executive Board of Scientific Advisors, had an 11 year-old patient with breast cancer. We're hearing about women and unfortunately, now girls diagnosed at a younger age, and now they're raising the age for women to get screened. How could this possibly make sense?

We must fight.

I caution what the next step is: the government will not pay for your mammogram unless you're 50 and over. This is common in Europe,

where medicine is socialized so the government doesn't have to pay for it. If this is the case, It's only a matter of time before not just the uninsured will have to pay for a mammogram, but each and every woman in this country who does have insurance and is under 50. We're in a recession. Paying for a mammogram is a deterrent for something that no one wants to do in the first place. It's just one more reason not to do the very thing that can save your life.

We must fight.

I started the CANCER VIXEN FUND here in New York City for women who are uninsured so they can get free mammograms. (When I was diagnosed, I was uninsured.) I believe that each and every woman has the right to live. The Cancer Vixen Mission: No Breast Left Behind. We've done over 600 mammograms and have saved two lives at least.

I can say with absolute certainty that mammograms do work.

Your life will never be the same again

Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find tomorrow on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday's defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday!

All you have to do is make today the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, ''If I had my life to live over again.'' Take the baton now. Run with it! This is your day. Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight.

Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. You'll see, your life will never be the same again!

OQ Mandino [1923 - 1996]

Treatment & Side Effects

In recent years, there's been an explosion of life-saving treatment advances against breast cancer, bringing new hope and excitement. Instead of only one or two options, today there's an overwhelming menu of treatment choices that fight the complex mix of cells in each individual cancer. The decisions — surgery, then perhaps radiation, hormonal (anti-estrogen) therapy, and/or chemotherapy — can feel overwhelming.

Breastcancer.org can help you understand your cancer stage and appropriate options, so you and your doctors can arrive at the best treatment plan for YOU.

In the following pages of the Treatment and Side Effects section, you can learn about:

Planning Your Treatment

What types of treatment are available and which might be appropriate for you.

Surgery

Breast-conserving surgery (lumpectomy), mastectomy, and lymph node dissection, and what to expect from each.

Chemotherapy

Who should get it, how it works, different types, side effects, and how to manage them.

Radiation Therapy

What it is, who it's for, advantages, side effects, and what to expect when you get it.

Hormonal Therapy

The link between hormones and breast cancer and how different groups of drugs — including ERDs, SERMs, and aromatase inhibitors — can affect that link.

Targeted Therapies

Including Herceptin: How they work, who should get them, how they're given, side effects, and major studies.

Complementary & Holistic Medicine

How complementary medicine techniques such as acupuncture, meditation, and yoga could be a helpful addition to your regular medical treatment. Includes research on complementary techniques and ways to find qualified practitioners.

Treatment Side Effects

A reference list of side effects and their explanations.

Clinical Trials

What clinical trials are and how to find trials if you would like to participate.

New Test May Predict Breast Cancer Metastasis

Researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have identified a new marker for breast cancer metastasis called TMEM, for Tumor Microenvironment of Metastasis. As reported in the March 24 online edition of the journal Clinical Cancer Research, density of TMEM was associated with the development of distant organ metastasis via the bloodstream -- the most common cause of death from breast cancer.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded translational study could lead to the first test to predict the likelihood of breast cancer metastasis via the bloodstream -- a development that could change the way breast cancer is treated.

An estimated 40 percent of breast cancer patients relapse and develop metastatic disease. About 40,000 women die of metastatic breast cancer every year.

"Currently, anyone with a breast cancer diagnosis fears the worst -- that the cancer will spread and threaten their lives. A tissue test for metastatic risk could alleviate those worries, and prevent toxic and costly measures like radiation and chemotherapy," says senior author Dr. Joan G. Jones, professor of clinical pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and director of Anatomic Pathology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

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Breast cancer costs poor people more

As a percentage of family income, money spent by U.S. women with breast cancer is much greater for low-income patients than for those who are well off, according to research presented December 12 in Texas at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Public health researcher Lisa Lines of the consulting firm Boston Health Economics in Waltham, Mass., and her colleagues analyzed expenditures made by 806 breast cancer patients from 1996 to 2005. Out-of-pocket costs included insurance premiums, payments to meet deductibles, co-pays and any other payments made to meet medical or drug costs associated with treatment.

The average annual out-of-pocket expenditure was about $2,300 per breast cancer patient, about half of which was spent on prescription drugs.

“Breast cancer is actually not the most expensive cancer for out-of-pocket expenditures,” Lines says. This and other data suggest that breast cancer costs patients more than colon or prostate cancer, but less than lung cancer, she says.

But breast cancer has a large proportion of people with a “high burden,” she says. The researchers classified patients as having a high burden when their out-of-pocket costs for coping with the cancer exceeded 10 percent of the family’s income. Roughly 70 percent of low-income breast cancer patients fell into the high-burden category in this analysis, compared with about 15 percent of middle-income and less than 5 percent of high-income breast cancer patients — apparently the result of better insurance, she says.

Cancer patients in general are disproportionately affected by a high out-of-pocket burden. That’s because many cancers have come to be treated more like a chronic disease than they used to be and are treated on an outpatient basis, Lines says. In the past, most cancer patients were treated in hospitals, where major medical insurance covered much of the cost.

Source: Science News By Nathan Seppa