Family Cancer Center

Cancer is a scary subject.

As a hematologist (blood disorder specialist) and oncologist (cancer specialist), I treat patients everyday and find myself fielding their questions. Interestingly enough, I find that many questions hold common misconceptions about cancer and that I hear similar questions frequently.

Many of our ideas appear to be endemic to the mindset of the Mid-South region, fueled by television, printed material and the internet. Throughout my experience, I have identified several misconceptions or myths about cancer and would like to set the record straight.

The risk of dying from cancer is rising

This observation is fairly common, but needs closer scrutiny to understand the truth. The actual number of patients diagnosed and cancer deaths have increased in the United States. However, it’s important to note that the population of the United States is larger and the age of the population is older. Many patients are outliving their heart attacks only to develop cancer later in life, so cancer becomes more prevalent in the elderly population.

The actual risk of diagnosis and death from cancer has fallen since the early 1990’s. Fewer than half of the population of patients diagnosed with cancer will actually die from their disease. Many are cured with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. Many more will outlive their cancer to succumb to other diseases later in life.
Cancer is a heterogeneous group of diseases and each tumor has a different natural history. Breast cancer grows differently and spreads to other organs in a different predictable fashion than prostate cancer, colon cancer or brain cancer. The likelihood of a single cure for all cancers is not expected.

Doctors have made headway in the treatment of cancer. The ten year survival for childhood leukemia two or three decades ago was approximately 10%. The cure rate for the same disease now is 90%. We are making headway but in small steps rather than broad therapeutic leaps.
If you operate on a cancer and the air touches the cancer, it will spread throughout the body.
I hear this in my office two or three times per week. This is not true. Generally, people are describing the natural history of malignancy. Cancer is abnormal tissue that has lost control of the normal mechanisms that keep cells from growing unchecked. By this fact, cancer cells spread by direct growth to other surrounding tissues or via the blood stream or the lymphatic (lymph nodes) system.

Tests detecting cancer have significantly improved over the last several years. However, it is still possible that a number of cancer cells have already spread to other locations prior to surgery. Surgery is still the first treatment of choice for most adult cancers because surgery cures a great deal of tumors. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy are given in the hopes of eliminating the remaining tumor cells which may have already spread to other locations. Therefore, when the tumor hits the air it is actually a good thing because the surgeon is attempting to remove the tumor prior to spreading to distant locations.

Doctors do not want to find a cure for cancer because they are making too much money with treatment
This idea, if not expressed directly, is implied by many people. Cancer is a very difficult disease to treat and if there was a quick and easy treatment, most people would know about it. In one survey by the American Cancer Society, 28% of all respondents felt that doctors were aware of a cure for many cancers but respondents felt that this knowledge was being suppressed.

Nearly all oncologists have a family member with cancer and we would certainly use any curative treatment if we had it.

The fastest way to become very wealthy is to start a company and sell that cancer cure. You would instantly have a huge business with high demand. I like my oncology colleagues but not enough to keep a cure from being well known. If there was an easy cure for cancer, everyone would know about it very quickly. That is not a secret that could be suppressed.

If you live long enough, you will eventually get cancer

Yes and no. Let’s use breast cancer as an example. There are several factors that predispose a person to develop breast cancer. The primary predisposing factor is being female. It is true that the incidence of breast cancer is overwhelming in women by 99 percent. I have approximately ten men in my practice with breast cancer but approximately 1,000 women with it. This fits the national average. All women are at risk for breast cancer. More than 80 percent of women who develop breast cancer have no identifiable risk factors. There are approximately 10 to 15 percent breast cancers that are located in a “cancer family”. These patients have identifiable breast cancer genes called breast cancer gene 1 (BRCA1) and breast cancer gene 2 (BRCA2). The risk for developing breast cancer is almost 80 percent in this population and there is also an increase in ovarian cancer and other malignancies. Other causes for breast cancer include obesity, a high fat diet, pregnancy late in life, early menstruation or late menopause. As a woman ages, the risk of developing breast cancer also rises.

Our behavior as a young adult has little impact on cancer later in life.

This is simply untrue.

Let’s consider smoking. The medical profession complains about smoking because there is a huge population of people who smoke versus a huge population of people who do not smoke and the results are undeniable. It turns out that the incidence of lung cancer is around 17 times higher in smokers versus nonsmokers. Smoking also increases the risk of head and neck cancer, esophageal cancer, bladder cancer, and pancreas cancer. The average time from exposure to cigarettes to the onset of lung cancer is 20 years. Since half of the adult United States population is either a current or former smoker, lung cancer will be a problem for a long time. The good news is that the incidence of lung cancer in men has peaked and is actually starting to fall. The bad news is that the incidence of lung cancer in women is rising rapidly. For women, death from lung cancer is now higher than death from breast cancer. Two-thirds of all fatal cancers can be prevented with simple lifestyle changes such as:

• Eating fruit, vegetables and whole grains.
• Exercise regularly.
• Maintain a normal body weight.
• Use sunscreen.
• Refrain from smoking.

I must have cancer because of a vitamin deficiency

Once again, this is a myth. It is not hard to see, however, from where this idea originates. Online information is full of vitamin and nutritional preparations that make fantastic claims about improving health and curing maladies. I am not aware of a single tumor linked to deficiency of an essential mineral or vitamin. Additionally, with approximately 70 percent of the adult population in the Mid-South either overweight or obese, a lack of vitamins is not a problem. If this misconception were true, based on that logic, the Mid-South should have a low incidence of cancer and that is not the case.

There must be a problem with my immune system

It may be a logical thought process to assume a problem with the immune system would induce a tumor to grow, but this is not the case. Although it is true that some malignancies do grow in the face of chronic infections as in liver cancers with Hepatitis-B and –C and lymphomas and other rare tumors in HIV positive patients, it is the infection that causes the immune deficiency, not the lack of immunity itself.

Consider a different perspective, when you have a cold or the flu you immediately feel sick with fever, cough, pain, headache, etc. Your immune system is reacting to the virus and bacteria that are foreign to your body and attempting to kill those pathogens. On the contrary, the reason why people are found to have very large tumors that are often spread to multiple places is that cancers are not foreign substances. These tumors contain your chromosomes and your DNA. Therefore, the body’s immune system does not sense that this is a foreign substance or a problem. Your immune system is fine; the problem is that cancer has developed unchecked growth.

Living in a polluted city is worse than smoking one pack of cigarettes per day

In an American Cancer Society survey, 40 percent felt that this statement to be true. The truth is just the opposite. Air pollution is far less likely to cause lung cancer than smoking cigarettes. Smoking is more dangerous than the level of air pollution encountered in most American cities. Dirty air contributes to asthma, heart disease and chronic bronchitis, but it has not been found to increase malignancies. It is estimated that air pollution increases the risk of lung cancer by one-one hundredth of the increased risk brought about by smoking one pack of cigarettes per day.

If you stop smoking before a cancer develops, your damaged lung tissue can nearly return to normal. Ten years after quitting smoking, your cancer risk is reduced to twice that of nonsmokers. Smoking cigars and pipe smoking are almost as likely to cause cancer as cigarette smoking. There is no evidence that smoking low tar cigarettes reduces the risk of lung cancer. A nonsmoker who lives with a smoker and is exposed to second hand smoke has a 30% greater risk of developing lung cancer than patients without exposure to second hand smoke.

Cancer doctors are just experimenting on us

Again, the answer is yes and no. With innovation comes experimentation. New cancer therapies are always in development and new cancer treatments must be compared with the proven benefit of previous treatments. We are always trying to improve the cure rate and decrease the toxicity of our treatment. If a new treatment is found to be beneficial and approved by the Food & Drug Administration, that new treatment will become the new medical community standard. Nearly all reputable cancer specialists do cancer treatment studies.

We all need to do better for our patients. Accepting a 50 percent cure rate is accepting a 50 percent failure rate. Until we are curing 100 percent of our patients there will always be new research and new clinical trials.

By A. Earle Weeks, M.D. - Dr. Weeks founded the Family Cancer Center with the understanding that cancer affects the whole family. Having practiced in the fields of Medical Oncology and Hematology for nearly 20 years, Dr. Weeks is dedicated to working with cancer patients to ensure that their treatment includes services and programs that help their family and friends establish a community of care and support.
With the goal of providing cutting edge medical care, Dr. Weeks is making a major commitment to participate in Phase II and Phase III clinical trials in a formal manner and the Family Cancer Center currently employs two full-time oncology nurses and data-managers devoted to clinical cancer research