The Power Within… Just Change Your Mind

Relay for Life… It Works!

Today, it’s another “Relay for Life” here in Estes Park. I know you’ve heard of this very successful fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, it’s been a growing and fun event for a number of years now. This word “Cancer” still strikes fear in most of us today and I would bet that every one of us has experienced this disease in one form or another. There are so many fund raisers for this disease and so many famous people putting their names behind foundations trying to generate money to help find cures. Is it working? Are there any successes in this fight against cancer?

In 1971, President Nixon declared war against cancer. He brought the fight into the forefront of medical research hoping to find cures and prevention strategies for cancer. Originally, cancer was considered a single disease, just located in different parts of the body. Thomas Glynn, PhD, the director of cancer science and trends at the American Cancer Society in Washington, D.C. calls it a “multi-front” war. “There is no such thing as one cure for cancer because we are dealing with hundreds of different diseases all gathered under the title “cancer.” When the war was declared the assumption was that to beat cancer, a simple cure was needed in order to shut down the cancer cells and all we needed to do was to find that simple way of turning the cancer off. What’s been discovered is that dealing with cancer is not that simple. It’s a huge war!

It can not be stated that we have discovered “A Cure” for cancer, in its full declaration. Since 1971, we have made tremendous advances. Today many cancers including breast, colon and prostate are not the death sentences that they used to be. “Overall, we are seeing reductions in prostate, colorectal, and breast cancers, and stomach cancer is almost nonexistent. Lung cancer for men has dropped and we are expecting a drop in the statistics for women by 2010” Glynn says. Lung cancer is still the top cancer killer for both men and women. Good news is that smoking is down across the board, which is helping tremendously in the fight against lung cancer.

On a broader scale, since 1993 to 2001 death rates for all cancer sites combined decreased 1.5% per year for men and .8% per year for women. So, this indicates that all the fund raising and famous name support must be working. A lot of this success has focused on early detection. Colonoscopies, mammograms, skin checks and certain blood tests have been discovered and perfected with all these funds. These simple preventative and early diagnosis tools have sky rocketed since the war was declared and are given much of the credit for improvements with death rates due to cancer.

Another component of the war against cancer where improvements are being made is with the drugs associated in the treatment. “Chemotherapy for breast cancer and colon cancer has significantly improved because we can kill the small disease that is not visible; Chemotherapy kills the microscopic disease as well as the main tumor.” Other drugs have also made enormous impacts in the fight against cancer. An example is a drug which starves tumors to death by cutting off their blood supply (Antiangiogenic drugs) and targets proteins that cancer needs in order to grow.

It used to be said that the treatment was worse than the cancer itself, but it’s getting better. “The drugs have changed our thinking about cancer. We can live with cancer today and we can survive the treatments. Overall, these new drugs absolutely do help, but so far they are not revolutionary in seeing a halving of incidence in death rates or mortality rates.” The drugs are allowing us to make this progress and they are perhaps on the edge of making that break-through we all want in this war. “We are in the early stages of drug development and need to know how best to use these drugs” Glynn says.

So as I’m walking in the Relay for Life this weekend, I’m going to take pride that all the money raised this year is helping and every step my team and family takes is a step closer. We are making progress! Even if we don’t understand the biology of all cancers… we are funding preventions, early diagnosis and eventually the end of this horrible war.

Please come join us tonight at the High School track and walk a lap or two. Your donations will also be appreciated; Team MedX will continue to collect your donations through next week. Hope to see you.

Deborah Holmes

July 28, 2008