President Nixon declared the war on cancer in the seventies and foresaw victory waiting around the door. Unfortunately, this goal was never achieved. We know that a cure for cancer is yet to be found.
Think about it: I am now 37 years old. If I go back in time, let’s say about 20 years, I barely knew anybody with cancer. And let’s go back another 20 years and look at the statistics or ask relatives or friends how much they knew about cancer or how many people they personally knew battling with the disease.
On average, currently 12.5 % of all women in the USA will get breast cancer at some point in their lives. That number was evidently not as bad just a few decades ago.
What is the situation today? Very likely you know more than one person with cancer. Maybe even within your own family.
In March of 2009 my wife Ann was diagnosed with breast cancer. My mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer only a few months later. And after I encountered blood in my urine, a CT-Scan result came back with another cancer diagnosis for our family. A larger tumor was found in my left kidney.
After three surgeries, the margins finally came back clear for my wife’s breast cancer. I just had my left kidney removed two weeks ago. Cancer used to be something remote. But nowadays it’s simply everywhere you look.
So there is no way to say it: Cancer is actually growing, even though research and sciences were provided with large amounts of money over the years. And we have to admit, that President Nixon’s ‘War on Cancer’ is far from over. Needless to say, that the situation is the same everywhere in the Western World, it’s not just the USA.
Is it only me imagining that all? Is it simply coincidental that both, my wife and I got diagnosed with cancer, plus my mom and another 10 folks I know – all that in just one year?
A lot of people disagree with me. They point out that especially in the area of breast cancer the situation has gotten much better, by referring to new studies and statistical data. According to those voices, we have a lower number of new incidents and mortalities.
You don’t need a Ph. D. in Mathematics to read the numbers that were published in the recent years about cancer rates. The problem is: you can look at numbers in many different ways. It’s the way they are being presented to the public. So sometimes they can be perceived incorrectly.
I don’t want to discount the achievements of modern medicine. However, it’s time for a reality-check and look at the facts as they present themselves to us. We might have won a couple of battles, but the war is far short of being over yet.
I was diagnosed with Kidney Cancer and seven months later after my wife Ann was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in March of 2009. I created our Breast Cancer Homepage with the intention to share our breast cancer story with you and to provide independent quality breast cancer treatment information .