1���&00111NORMAL.STY2@�001� Neal Levin Mr. Cook English 122-59 8/8/1991 Living With Cancer How can we prevent cancer from affecting our lives? I'm sure many people have asked themselves this question. So I'm going to go through information on exactly what cancer is about, and what you can do about it. Cancer is a disease in which cells multiply without control, destroy healthy tissue, and inevitably endanger life. There are about 100 kinds of cancer that attack human beings. And this has caused the disease to be one of the major causes of death around the world. Cancer is caused by certain agents, which are called carcinogens. An item containing carcinogens is carcinogenic. Many metals are carcinogenic but to see exactly how many, you must realize that a metal is carcinogenic if it meets one or more of these categories: 1) the metal alone produces cancer in animals, 2) many forms of Levin 2 the compound identify as common carcinogenic elements, 3) the metal is reported to be a human carcinogen (Efron 141). Many other things are carcinogenic. Among the minerals, chlorite and tantalum, and also the forms of crystalline silica (sand): pure quartz, rose quartz, agate, amethyst, chalcedony, onyx, and flint. Soil is naturally radioactive since it contains potassium-40, uranium-238, and thorium-232 (Efron 144). So the truth is that you can not stop all the forms of cancer or even keep all the cancer causing things away from you, since out of the elements that are required for life, 9 of them are reported carcinogenic. The 9 carcinogens are: zinc, cobalt, copper, chromium, iron, manganese, nickel, selenium, and even oxygen. Therefore oxygen is a slow poison. The fact about oxygen being carcinogenic has been known since the 1920's, but it is a rarely known fact to the general public (Efron 148). If the oxygen we breath is killing us, then how can we survive? Well the answer to that is our immune system, which under proper circumstances will protect us from most invaders of our body. Keeping the immune system in fully functioning order is essential to keeping our bodies safe Levin 3 from all diseases. And to do that we must keep our bodies fully nourished, fully rested, and fully relaxed. If these three requirements are not met, then the diseases we fear will overcome us, and treatment is in order (Prevention Magazine 194,197). And do you think then that the treatments will help you? Wrong. In the case of lung cancer, fewer than 10% of the patients can be cured, and only 30-40% of the patients even have an operable disease when it is first discovered. It takes about 15 years of smoking to get lung cancer, but it becomes fatal only a few months afterwards. With oral cancer, only 45% have it diagnosed before the disease spreads to other parts of the body (Brody 76). Of the treatments there are currently three types. 1) Surgery, which is the best cure for solid tumors, and even if the cancer can't be cured, this form will offer relief from the discomfort. 2) Radiation treatment, which is often more harmful than then the disease itself. 3) Chemotherapy, which has side affects of causing nausea, vomiting, hair loss (temporary), and decreased blood cells (anemia). Sometimes this also causes painful sores in the mouth. The drugs for chemotherapy will block the Levin 4 replication of DNA (alkylating agents), and block the normal chemical machinery (antibodies). Unfortunately these drugs that attack the cancerous cells also damage the normal cells as they can't differentiate (Brody 94). All and all it is a sad fact that the treatments can be more harmful then the disease itself. There is a strong probability that this disease will be much more common in the future since, we are having longer lifespans, and the oxygen the is carcinogenic will have more time to affect us. There is no escape from this dreadful disease called cancer. Levin 5 Works Cited Brody, Jane E And Arthur I Holeb, M.D.. You Can Fight Cancer And Win. NY: New York Times Book Company, 1987. Efron, Edith. The Apocalyptics: Cancer and The Big Lie. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1984. Environmental Defense Fund and Robert H. Boyle. Malignant Neglect. NY: Random House, 1979. Prevention Magazine Health Books. The Complete Book Of Cancer Prevention. 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