There are clearly environmental factors that can decrease the incidence and death from cancer. I would still say though that the majority of cancers cannot be prevented at this point, but they can be treated and they can be treated two major ways.
If you have a pap smear every year, there's no reason to develop cervical cancer.
The decrease in incidents of death from cancer is largely attributable to new medicines or therapeutics. Perhaps a third is attributable to changing our environment, and that includes of course smoking which I believe accounted for probably 20 percent of deaths from, certainly from lung cancer, more than that from lung cancer, but from cancer overall.
The biggest risk factor for cancer is aging.
Precision medicine is one way to attack cancer and it's proven to be very effective but, remember that like HIV/AIDS, you're going to need combination therapies.
Probably all of us have random rogue cancer cells floating around in our bodies but by and large, in the majority of cases, our immune system circulates and acts as a surveillance mechanism and kills off those few tumor cells.
I like to think of making cancer a chronic disease rather than focus just on curing cancer.
Cancer can no longer be classified according to the organ in which it arises. It has to be characterized in terms of the genetic mutation that exists.
Precision medicine is diving into the DNA with a knowledge that everybody's tumor has a unique genetic profile and you want to be able to identify that specific piece of DNA that has become mutated and that is driving cancer growth.
Cancer is everybody's cause.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004.
Though we don't have a cure for cancer we at least have stopped being too ashamed to even say the name of the disease - and the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic is edifying, isn't it? Shame shuts down productive thinking, and I'd like to open the doors. It's a first step.
I think the way we talk about cancer has really evolved. I remember the way my grandmother used to talk about it, like a death sentence, no-one would even mention the word.
(I've learned) how important it is to really evaluate your own life...to pay attention to what's going on in your own head, and to know that this is (your) life...and make conscious decisions about how you want to live it.
There is a lot of focus on TV, in magazines...about being skinny and rich. I don't think those are that important. It's much more important for us to be good, honest people that try to help others and live the best life we can. That's where you get your satisfaction ultimately.
I'm going to beat it, ...it's hard...but I plan on being around for a long time to come.
As J.R. I could get away with anything - bribery, blackmail and adultery. But I got caught by cancer. I do want everyone to know that it is a very common and treatable form of cancer. I will be receiving treatment while working on the new 'Dallas' series.
Before my diagnosis [cancer] I was a competitor but not a fierce competitor. When I was diagnosed, that turned me into a fighter.
What matters is ultimately what collectively those people on the street - whether that's the cycling community, the cancer community - it matters what they think.
The ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work.
It's a fact that children with cancer have higher cure rates than adults with cancer, and I wonder if the reason is their natural, unthinking bravery... Adults know too much about failure; they're more cynical and resigned and fearful.
Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things-whether health or a car or an old sense of self-has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.
Regardless of one victory, two victories, four victories, there's never been a victory by a cancer survivor. That's a fact that hopefully I'll be remembered for.
People refer to 'the good ol' days', but I don't know what they're talking about. As someone who's battled cancer, if I lived more than 20 years ago, I'd be a dead man.
I'm cycling to take cancer message worldwide.
