Demented thing is, the same goes for all of us. One out of four of people living today will someday get cancer. Most of you probably knew this, but when I heard it in class this morning I think I zoned out for half an hour or something. If you're interested in having the same feeling: skim through your family tree, and randomly color one out of four family members black.

25% chance. That's insane...

Anyhow, not trying to demotivate you guys. So ummmm... stay positive?

And have a good night

Most cancer can be easily taken care of, some cases with a scapel and numbing stuff. Don't worry.

I don't want to die!!!

Actually, most cancer will occur when you're old and it'll cut down your life expectancy quite significantly.

Getting cancer and dying when you're 25 is possible but improbable. Getting cancer and dying when you're 75 is highly likely.

You'll probably hear an awful lot about certain foods '"causing cancer". I think that sugar substitute, sucrose or whatever, is one of those. It is probably quite true that sucrose may increase the chances of getting cancer, but is totally hyped up in the media, giving the impression that one drop of sucrose and you're outta there, that people put it down and won't even accept it being true. Might even eat more sucrose simply in defiance.

Over a long period of time, those foodstuffs will contribute quite significantly to your chances of getting cancer (imagine how much sucrose you'd have eaten in your lifetime). It all adds up and up until you're about 80 and you're highly likely to get cancer.

It's not a "25% chance that you're going to DIE FROM CANCER TOMORROW", it's a "25% chance that you're going to live somewhat shorter than you might otherwise"

Eh? I thought it was a one in three chance of conducting cancer in a lifetime.

Contracting?

(I think the sugar subsitute you're thinking of is aspertame which they put in diet drinks)

THe ridiculous thing is that everyone thinks it would be such a miricle to find a cure for cancer and other diseases...the day that happens is the end of mankind...I mean what the ****??? If they cure cancer how do they expect people to die?? The world is already quickly becoming overpopulated (world population going to double withhin 50 years)...But no people only think of it on a strictly individual basis, saving the life of a man/woman, when in reality we would be ****ed outselves over.

Whoops. I feel daft now.

Imagine if you actually did conduct cancer. You'd have to live in a giant bubble or something.

So you're saying that cancer is a good thing? Obviously you have never had someone close to you die from it.

Also, there is the fact that most (read: nearly all) cancer victims get cancer AFTER they have had children... so it really wouldn't help much with overpopulation.

UCM (Untraditional Chinese Medicine studies..somewhere in Texas, I believe), along with lots of other agenceis, research conducts study for cancer paitence. UCM found that Tai Chi (Prounounced "Tie Chee"), and Qi Gong (Pronounced "Chee Gung") practices make improvements on cancer paitence, along with other cures for diseased and minor illnesses. They turned out quite successfull.

Me in paticular, I personally believe that human beings (Homo Saipion Sapion) are the dominate creatures of this time period. The Geologic Fossiled Time Scale shows that dominance is placed via evolution. For example, in the Devonion period, fish were dominate. A great extinction takes place, and those adapted to the climate where reptiles. They became dominate. Pangea takes place, and the reptiles evolve to huge Dinosaurs. And so on.

What's the point about talking about this? Human beings are dominate now (Cenozoic, Quaternary), and we're going to and end. As the example above, life starts out small, and turn out huge. For sports fans, look back on the NBA 20-30 years ago. Did you see many 6.5ft-7ft. players? No. Now look at today's league. Almost every team has at least one 6.5-7 footer. Why is this improtant? Because history repeats it's self. One day we'll be greatly reduced, or possibly extinction. And Dinosaurs didn't become extinct by one factor....no, there were lots.

• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• Wouldn't fit on Noah's Ark
• Sterile
• Too big to reproduce
• Mammals ate theier eggs
• Too hot due to climate change
• Too cold due to climate change

Now, possible human extinctions could be a combination of factors too:

• AIDS/HIV
• Cancer
• Nuclear War
• World War gone too far
• Other various diseases
• Supernatural forces
• Natural forces (O-Zone layer, meteors, ect.)
• Starvation

To summerize if you're still reading, your god hates us. That's why your god made Cancer.

Thoughts?
-J

I have like a 90% chance of getting prostate cancer. Yay me.

Uh...well...old age? Trauma? Cancer isn't the only cause of death.



The world population is expected to peak somewhere around 11 billion, level off for a bit and then begin to decline (assuming that people don't propogate like rabbits):

Click.

What a ridiculous argument...A death of any kind is hard to take...But its a very necessary part of life.

And yes Wolfy, I am aware of that but as a leading cause of death, don't you think it would create problems if it were completely eradicated?

By the time they develop a cure for cancer, I suspect that the prime causes of death will be malnutrition and disease.

Oh, you're right. After I watched my aunt weaken and die from ovarian cancer, it's ridiculous that I might not view cancer as a good thing.

Yes, death is necessary; but is it really necessary for it to be caused by a horrible debilitating illness such as cancer which makes its victims suffer for years? Was it necessary for my aunt to die before she had even had her 40th birthday?

I'm sorry, but you're coming off as being a bit insensitive in your posts.

That's a good thing, that means that more people are dying of natural, inevitable causes... instead of getting murdered or hit by a train.

Uh, Tai Chi and Qi Gong are very traditional forms of Chinese medicine..

Also, Raol does have a point, but attacking cancer is really the wrong faucet for it all..

No, what he should be talking about is vaccinations and innoculations.

Let's take smallpox. It's a huge killer. I don't know how huge, but let's assume it kills 90% of all people. The remaining 10% are naturally resistant to smallpox, through random genetic mutations. If we let the smallpox kill those 90% of a population, we are left with the 10% who are naturally resistant to pass on their genes. Everyone is naturally resistant to smallpox and smallpox will not be a problem for the human race at all. Perfect natural selection.
Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

(it does lead to an ethical quagmyre, in that it does suggest, or blatantly spell out, that some people are genetically superior to others. which they are, but for the sake of collective psychological health it's probably not a good idea to build upon it too much. I do however think that prospective parents should seriously consider whether to have a child naturally if they are found to be carrying a genetic disease, such as cycstic fibrosis or Huntington's. the only way that genetic diseases will be wiped out is for those carrying the genes to not reproduce and have it removed from the gene pool. Perhaps some sort of genetic screening could be done, or something)

Bear in mind that this sort of logic probably can't be applied to cancer as I don't think there's any way to genetically resistant to cancer. Cancer is far too complicated a topic, anyway, and should probably be broken down into the different types of cancer in order to be analysed like that.

To start out with, the universitie's name is untraditional chinese medicine, but they use anything, I guess. I'm not too informed about it.

Tai Chi is not a traditional medication form in China. They consider it a martial art, and a way of life. Not an excersize. Almost 80% of the chinese population practice Tai Chi for half an hour to an hour a day.

Qi Gong is also nontraditional, as it is heavily understudied and was only taught to Daoism and Buddhism students. Documents were only released to the general public about 20 years ago, and chinese doctors are still incorperating all the information in for physical science. As of now, only a few leads come close to the relation between "Chi Energy" and bioelectromagnetics.

Very understudied.

I agree with everything else you have said, though.

Well, I happen to be one of those "1 out of...".


Brain tumor.


But currently winning the battle.

hey you're probablys on to something

i found a lump a few days back

kyle90, whether you realize it or not your views are very very selfish.

Uhhh... wait... I'm selfish because I think a cure for cancer is a good thing? It's not like I'm the only person who has been negatively affected by cancer.

I understand your arguments about overpopulation, but saying that people shouldn't try to cure cancer just because it is a population control device is rather strange.

Besides, I've already explained why cancer doesn't even work for population control. If it, say, killed off one-quarter of all the babies that were born (and thus preventing them from creating future generations), then it would be effective. But cancer, for the most part, targets people who are past reproductive age. So it does nothing to keep population numbers down. Unless you are trying to say that without cancer we would be overrun by 150-year-olds.

So adults don't count as part of the population?

Yes! 75% chance of not getting cancer! Whoohoo!
Really by the time we're 90 I'd be supprised if we didn't get cancer. I sure hope I don't get much past 70.

No matter what you do you're gonna die. And I'm glad. Immagine being stuck in a nursing home for 2000 years. Awful. Plus, I'd get tired of life.

Sure they do, but if a population control device doesn't prevent people from having children (and the exponential growth that this causese), then it really is quite useless.

The elderly don't make up a very large percentage of the population, and they aren't going to live forever just because there is a cure for cancer. In one sense, you are absolutely right. Death is a part of life. It will never go away, no matter how many diseases we cure.

only 25%? Better than I thought. Everything vies you cancer these days. I've just stopped worrying about it. I expect to eventually die of cancer. It's just a matter of how long can I delay it?

Not only elderly people get cancer though. Many could live anothewr 30-40 years if the cancer was cured..thats a long time and it could add up.

I had to go through bone marrow transfer to prevent blood cancer.

So, yay.

Your logic is valid, but cancer is not the most effective form of population control by any means. Population control works best if it kills before the host can reproduce. That way, you are preventing a new generation being spawned, and you are removing the inferior genes from the gene pool, thus furthering humanity as a whole. This is what you should be arguing. I realise you think it highly altruistic, dying from cancer in order to help the human race, but dying wouldn't really be that beneficial at all, and a cure would not be as damaging as you proclaim. Vaccinations and innoculations, not to mention antibiotics, have had a far worse effect on the human race.

The vast majority of cancer sufferers are above the age of 50 (the median age for all cancers combined is 68). Killing off old people is a very ineffective method of population control. Killing young people is far more effective, as can be seen by the effects bubonic plague had on the populations of Europe.

If you're looking for government programs to tackle overpopulation, then letting people die from diseases is indeed the most efficient but not at all practical. China's one-child policy is the most sensible and practical idea, and it's worked quite well.

Eat sleep for tommorrow we shall die. Basically I'm not afraid of cancer we have to go sometime.

Cancer is nature's way of saying "you idiots, you're not supposed to live forever." Depressing, isn't it?

I agree with Raol Duke on most of what he says, insensitive ******* as most of you may consider him. Death is necessary. slow, painful deaths happen. It's a part of life, and will never change (or, if it does change, read: we become immortal, i sure as hell don't want to be around to see it. Immortality is a curse, for the individual and the species, more later).

And this isn't coming from someone who doesn't have any experience with this. My grandfather, a great man who i was really attached to, died of alzhiemers. he didn't know who i was for about 10 years, and i wasn't able to see him during this time because he could have become violent. I saw him for the first time after all that in a coffin. My grandmother, who was an amazing woman and i loved dearly, died from breast cancer and a broken heart (i'm not being romantic here, when my grandfather died her spirit jsut died, she sunk into the worst depression i've ever seen) a few months later. My great aunt, anouther really strong woman who i loved and who was always great to me, died from, for the most part, old age, but also paranoid dementia. She saw visions and was 'out of it' for a great deal, and her body decayed to such an extent that she couldn't even walk, from series of accidents, and this was a woman who i knew was capable of driving (serious, not the type of driving where they go 10 miles per hour down a highway and still crash into things) until about 5 years before she died, and never needed any walking asistance until her accidents (she was at least 65).

I never cried at any of the funerals.

Its not that i'm unemotional, though i know myself to be a cynical ******* conserning the human race. its just that this **** happens, its a part of life. They died, their in a better place (i'm a catholic, so i believe so, at least), why the hell should i mourn because they whent to someplace better then the hell they were in before? feeling such grief at a funeral seems to me very, very selfish. "oh my god, i'll never get to see/talk/etc. to them again." selfish, so selfish. want to talk to them? pray. want to see them? that's what you have a memory for, etc. Thier in a better place, why would you want to trouble them with your own petty grief?

ugh, sorry, i know i offended many people, and maybe someday, if i lose my wife, i'll understand why, but now i just can't, and i hope i won't fell like that at my wife's death, i wouldn't want to marry someone who will want me to feel unconsolable grief because they've gone somewhere better.

Anyway, a slightly different topic, Immortality is a curse. you get to see all you're friends, family die. a planet will become uncontrollably overpopulated and destroy itself. If there were some sort of space colonization, it would have to grow exponentially until it's expanding faster then the speed of light, to support an ever increasing immortal population. Did you ever wonder, assuming you know this, why [the hebrew/christian] God punished Cain with immortality? (losely quoted: "and i shall put a mark upon your forehead, so that all shall know you, and none shall ever kill you, so you may walk forever upon the earth").

And pure immortality is even worse, never dying no matter what. I don't feel like explaining it now, if you want to know why i say this, go read the short story "The Island of the Immortals" by Ursula K. Le Guin, in Changing Planes if you can't find it seperately.

We don't need cancer to control population. Have you taken a walk in the streets of any major american city lately? McDonald's will do the job on it's own.

If population ever gets so large that ressources are so sparse and can't be devided equaly, all you have to do is impose child birth liscences. Someone gets pregnant without a liscence? abort the child. Even you religious fans who whine abortion is murder will have to agree it's a far better death than lying in a hospital bed for a year, having a few of your vital organs removed, lost an eye, and being hooked on a machine 24 hours a day.

My dad died of cancer, so I guess I'm at higher risk because of that. It's really not the way I want to go though.

Yes mort hog...I agree with what u said..Im not saying cancer specifically i jsut wanted to rant about how curing diseases is not a good idea.

Super Sized me was such an awsome movie.

Abortion isn't necessary, if you implement the system before overpopulation becomes a really serious problem. China's system is that the government will provide welfare for the first child, but not for the second. This works pretty well, as children are really expensive so no-one particularly wants to have more than one child.
Of course, it only works if you actually have a welfare system to begin with...