It Will Never Happen To Me Or My Children or My Mother

Because NOTHING will ever happen.

Not to anyone I love.

It was a random misprint.

“It is not so much a disease as a phenomenon, the result of a basic evolutionary compromise. As a body lives and grows, It’s cells are constantly dividing, copying their DNA — this vast genetic library — and bequeathing it to the daughter cells. They, in turn, pass it to their own progeny: copies of copies of copies. Along the way, errors inevitably occur. Some are caused by carcinogens but most are random misprints.

Over the eons, cells have developed complex mechanisms that identify and correct many of the glitches. But the process is not perfect, nor can it ever be. Mutations are the engine of evolution. Without them we never would have evolved. The trade-off is that every so often a certain combination will give an individual cell too much power. It begins to evolve independently of the rest of the body. Like a new species thriving in an ecosystem, it grows into a cancerous tumor. For that there can be no easy fix.

These microscopic rebellions have been happening for at least half a billion years, since the advent of complex multicellular life — collectives of cells that must work together, holding back, as best each can, the natural tendency to proliferate. Those that do not — the cancer cells — are doing, in a Darwinian sense, what they are supposed to do: mutating, evolving and increasing in fitness compared with their neighbors, the better behaved cells of the body. And these are left at a competitive disadvantage, shackled by a compulsion to obey the rule and poisoning our environment. …

As people age their cells amass more potentially cancerous mutations. Given a long enough life, cancer will eventually kill you — unless you die first of something else. That would be true even in a world free from carcinogens and equipped with the most powerful medical technology.

Faced with this inevitability, there have been encouraging reductions in the death toll from childhood cancer, with mortality falling by more than half since 1975. For older people, some early-stage cancers — those that have not learned to colonize other parts of the body — can be cured with a combination of chemicals, radiation therapy and surgery. Others can be held in check for years, sometimes indefinitely. But the most virulent cancers have evolved such wily subterfuges (a survival instinct of their own) that they usually prevail. Progress is often measured in a few extra months of life.”