by Susan Braun
Around the world, more than 12 million human beings are diagnosed with cancer each year, and nearly 8 million die. That’s more than 20,000 dying EACH DAY from cancer. The numbers are staggering. Think of losing a small town each day. Or a mid-sized university campus full of students. Six times more people die from cancer than from car accidents. Six times more individual lives are lost to cancer than to malaria. And if statistics hold, it will be the number one cause of human death on this planet within this decade.
What causes cancer? At a meeting at the National Cancer Institute last month, experts talked about somatic changes, epigenetic changes, and genetic mutations. Layers of assault that cumulatively lead the body to be unable to control unusual growth of damaged cells. What are some of the assaults?
The public often hears about smoking, poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle. One layer of assault. When combined with a genetic predisposition—a second layer—each becomes even more likely to lead to cancer. But genetic predispositions are less common than most people believe: in the most common cancers—those in the lung, breast, colon, and prostate gland, it’s estimated that 20 percent or fewer cases are linked to family history. Stress, inflammation, and viruses are being studied to see what role they play. Another layer. These are all things we can assess in an individual; they are individual risk factors. Those related to our personal lifestyle we can try to change. Increasingly, our genetic predisposition is something we can measure and understand. And, as individuals, we can take steps to reduce risks related to our personal lifestyle.
But what of those things beyond our individual control? We’ve all heard the stories about asbestos, a common building material until it was banned in many countries in the 1980s. It is directly linked to a horrible form of lung cancer called mesothelioma. People didn’t choose to live in a home that had asbestos in the walls and ceilings. They didn’t even know. Radiation is also directly linked to many forms of cancer. But the people of Chernobyl didn’t choose to live in a region that was going to be the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear power plant accidents and become one of the thousands that developed cancer because of it. Some of the causes of cancer—another layer of assault—come from things in our air and water that we don’t know to avoid or simply cannot. Many people without cancer in their family, people with a healthy lifestyle, people who “did it all right,” develop cancer. And all too often they die. We can’t point to choices that they made and shake our fingers and our heads. These are our parents, our children, our friends. Can we protect them? Can we prevent their suffering?
For years, many believed that the environment played a minor role in most cancers. We believed that our air and water were kept safe. That the food we ate didn’t contain things known to cause cancer. That chemicals in the shampoo we used for our babies were tested by the government before being put in products. And now, the more we know, the more we realize that what we believed isn’t necessarily true.
After a year-long process of looking at the data and hearing from experts across the country, the President’s Cancer Panel has concluded that what some thought was a very small contribution of environmental factors to cancer may be quite significant. The President’s Cancer Panel is composed of three highly regarded individuals (one position is vacant at present), generally a physician, a scientist, and an advocate, appointed by the President of the United States to advise her or him on the status of cancer in our country. They work with a staff of experts to gather information on and draw conclusions about the most pressing concerns about cancer. They have the ear of the President and the attention of the public.
Many scientists, clinicians, researchers, journalists, and activists have long recognized the critical role of the environment in cancer causation. When a body of experts that speaks directly to the President—and has a significant reach into the public—makes strong conclusions about links between the environment and cancer, it helps us to better understand the critical role of a very important layer of assault in the web of cancer causation. It calls us to action.
(To read the report of the President’s Cancer Panel, see: http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/pcp.htm)
Cancer is an enigmatic disease. It is complex. There isn’t one cause. Multiple assaults on one human being—genes, lifestyle, environment—lead to the formation of a cancer. Prevention will mean making our environments, both internally and externally, as healthy as we can. Fewer assaults will mean fewer cases of cancer. And to this end, we work at Commonweal through the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Health Care Without Harm, and other programs and initiatives to help inform the public about how and why environmental change is critical if we are ever to prevent cancer.
As evidence mounts about things in our environment that lead to cancer, we’re learning that the road to cancer prevention isn’t all about who we are as individuals and what we can do ourselves. It’s not just about our genes and our lifestyle. It’s also about knowing what’s in our food and air and water, what’s in the products we use around our homes and on our bodies, and working in community to effect changes. Changes in what we buy, changes in laws and regulations that are meant to keep us safe, changes in what we agree is acceptable for our children and for our earth if we are to continue as a species.
But the story doesn’t end there. What of the 30,000 people who will be told TODAY that they have cancer? What of the children and parents, husbands, wives, friends? Some will do well and go on to live long lives. And some will not. Irrespective of diagnosis or prognosis, an individual person with cancer can heal. In his book Choices in Healing, Commonweal’s President, Michael Lerner, defines healing as follows:
Healing…is an inner process through which a person becomes whole. Healing can take place at the physical level, as when a wound or broken bone heals. It can take place at an emotional level, as when we recover from terrible childhood traumas or from a death or a divorce. It can take place at a mental level, as when we learn to reframe or restructure destructive ideas about ourselves and the world that we carried in the past. And it can take place at what some would call a spiritual level, as when we move toward God, toward a deeper connection with nature, or toward inner peace and a sense of connectedness.
Healing…goes beyond curing and may take place when curing is not at issue or has proved impossible. Although the capacity to heal physically is necessary to any successful cure, healing can also take place on deeper levels, whether or not physical recovery occurs.
For 25 years, Commonweal’s Cancer Help Program (CCHP) has been helping people with cancer to heal. The program is perhaps the most respected residential support program for people with cancer and their significant others in the United States. Bill Moyers featured the CCHP in his award-winning PBS series Healing and the Mind. The CCHP is a week-long program of support groups, yoga, meditation, relaxation, massage, healing arts, primarily vegetarian whole foods cooking, individual counseling, and explorations of choices in healing, therapy, and facing death and dying if and when that time comes. Hundreds of participants report enduring transformative effects. They find healing.
As I write, we have just concluded Commonweal’s 152nd week-long Cancer Help Program. Eight people have shared with us their stories, their pain, their sadness, their joy. They often arrive stressed, frightened, angry, overwhelmed. And most often they leave calmer and stronger. They leave with a changed outlook on the meaning of their life. They leave not knowing how long the road ahead may be, but with a commitment to make that road as beautiful as it can be.
Cancer statistics paint the big and distressing picture. Cancer is rampant. Many good people are devoting their lives to change the course of the myriad diseases that comprise the collective term cancer and to deconstruct the layers of causation. While we do this, we cannot lose sight of those people who today are in the midst of one of the most difficult and frightening journeys that life can present. For each individual, each child, father, sister, friend, there is always a possibility for healing. In this there is joy. In this there is hope.
We are deeply grateful to the Alberta S. Kimball Foundation, the Compton Foundation, the Jenifer Altman Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, the Lia Fund, two anonymous foundations, and many individual donors for their generous core support of Commonweal.
