Donna Trussell

Cancer is something of a mystery even to the experts. We use one term to describe what may in truth be a thousand different diseases. Already most cancers are divided into dozens of subtypes, not to mention subtypes within subtypes.

Most babyboomers can recall their parents saying to one another: “Stop worrying! You’re going to give yourself an ulcer.” Then researchers discovered that ulcers are not caused by anxiety or stress, but rather the Helicobacter pylori germ.

Two hundred years ago tuberculosis was a poet’s disease, thought to be caused by melancholia and the frequenting of pubs and brothels. Even vampirism and fairies figured in. But once researchers isolated the bacteria that causes TB, the old myths were relegated to the dustbin of history.

Perhaps in 50 years cancer myths too will fade, but I can’t wait that long.

Why are cancer myths so commonplace? Because both cancer patients and people who hope they never get cancer find them reassuring.

Children believe in Santa Claus, but then they grow up and demand proof for wild stories and fairy tales. As a society, we need to grow up. How can we ever cure this disease if we refuse to investigate or give credence to the real causes?

Negative thinking causes cancer

What if it’s the other way around? Maybe undiagnosed cancer leads to exhaustion, and that leads to depression. Then comes the diagnosis, an event that would hardly lead to the popping of champagne corks.

Vince Curatola as Johnny Sack in The Sopranos

The theory that negative thinking causes cancer is so pervasive that I was not surprised to see it crop up on an episode of The Sopranos. Crime boss Johnny Sack dismisses his wife’s attempt to link his cancer with his state of mind. “What about all these six-year-olds with leukemia? What’s that from?” says Sack, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Their negative thinking?”

A case in point: A friend of mine decided to get a massage at a hotel. Anticipating a shriek at the sight of her scars, my friend decided to warn the masseuse ahead of time about her mastectomy. The masseuse said, “Wow. Who were you mad at?” (Umm..no one, girl…till now.)

Another case in point: The daughter of a fallen D-Day soldier believes her mother’s gastric cancer was caused by “pain at the core of her being.” Grief as sourdough starter? Wait a minute! Advanced age is perhaps the most established of all risk factors for cancer, and this widow was 70 years old when she died. D-Day was tragic for many reasons, but to say that it caused cancer deaths in relatives back home 50 years later is a stretch.

Despite scads of evidence to the contrary, the reigning assumption is that “nice” people don’t get cancer.

Couldn’t. Be. More. Wrong.

I do not offer myself as exhibit A, since I’m more in the too-mean-to-die category. But I’ve known others—lots. Nicest people you’d ever want to meet, many no longer with us.

So where does this niceness myth come from? From the imagination and desire. Powerful stuff, but no more true than the dream you had last night.

Positive thinking will prevent cancer

Ah, the flip side. Well-meaning friends and neighbors have said to me: I know you’re going to make it because you have such a positive attitude. (Obviously, they didn’t notice the the do-it-yourself will kit on my coffee table.)

David Spiegel of Stanford University School of Medicine told U.S. News & World Report that cancer patients should not feel guilty if they can’t stay upbeat. “We die because we’re mortal,” he said, “not because we don’t have a positive attitude.”

I suspect that some doctors are not acquainted with the work of Dr. Spiegel. Just a few years ago I overheard a doctor ask a cancer patient about her spirits. Not so good, said the patient. The doctor wagged a finger at the pale, bald, sad-eyed chemo patient and warned that a positive attitude—or lack thereof—will determine whether or not she survives.

Doctor, I’d like to see you have parts of your body removed and what’s left damaged or destroyed by treatment—all the while knowing you may die anyway—and we’ll see how sunny you are.

Poet John Keats died of TB at age 25

America’s obsession with happiness is a relatively recent phenomenon. The miracle of melancholia makes the case that we’re a nation “obsessed with being happy, but sometimes feeling bad can do you some good.” In the 18th-century world of poet John Keats, the prevailing belief was that only suffering can make us a fully formed human being.

My divorce caused my cancer. That bastard!

Your ex may well be a bastard, but the argument that he caused your cancer is no slam dunk.

For almost every study that proves one thing, you can find another study that proves the opposite. The jury is out on the role of stress on cancer, but do you really need an excuse? Why not avoid stress because it interferes with pleasure?

Cancer is nature’s way of weeding out the old and in the way.

On the contrary, your body is trying hard to save you. Researcher Dr. Norman Sharpless of University of North Carolina told The New York Times. “I don’t think aging is a random process. It’s a program, an anticancer program.”

When you’re young, your body maintains strength and health by replacing cells. But there’s a down side: Every time a cell divides, there’s another opportunity for mutation, and every mutation has the potential to become malignant. The older you get, the better the odds you’ll get cancer because of the trillions of times cell division has taken place.

By middle age nature is betting that your days of attracting a mate, reproducing, chasing down toddlers and killing wooly mammoths are coming to a close. Better to have gray hair, wrinkles and flabby muscles , says your body, than cancer.

Pollution is THE cause of cancer

The latest research points to cancer as a genetic disease. Whether those defective genes were inherited or damaged by a carcinogen in the environment, we can’t yet say. But cancer cells have been found in Egyptian mummies and dinosaur bones. so we know this disease was around long before humans, smog, diet soft drinks and cell phones.

That said, there’s certainly nothing wrong with fresh air and homemade key lime pie.

I exercise and eat organic, so I won’t get cancer

Healthy habits will improve one’s stamina and quality of life, but for all we know cancer prefers a strong,well-nourished body — all the better to grow in!

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

Witness pancreatic-cancer survivor Randy Pausch’s last lecture. Most of us baby boomers can only wish we were as vigorous, fit—he proves it with on-the-spot pushups—and mentally agile as Mr. Pausch.  And in his testimony before Congress on March 13, 2008, Pausch revealed he never drank or smoked.

For every slothful, obese cancer patient, you can find a buff yoga instructor wondering what went wrong. For every childless woman with cancer, you can find another with five kids and a big ol’ tumor. Cancer doesn’t seem interested in our little rules.

If I were to give advice, I’d say do what you love, in moderation. There are no guarantees. Personally, I give credence to the studies that showed the anti-tumor effect of pinot noir. (Something tells me that pinot noir vineyards may have chipped in to fund the studies, but what the hell.) Also hot chocolate. And don’t forget regular visits to a day spa and snarking at bad television.

Cancer is a manageable disease, like diabetes

Let’s do a little arithmetic to test the veracity of this popular mantra. Fortunately, the government tracks these statistics.  PYLL, or person-years of life lost is “the difference between the actual age of death due to the disease/cause and the expected age of death.”

2004 person-years of life lost to “malignant neoplasms” was 8,564,000.

2004 person-years lost to “diabetes mellitus” was 1,043,000.

Hmmmmm.

No link just now, but wrongdiagnosis.com once featured these stats:

Diabetes ratio of death to incidence: 8.9 percent.
Cancer ratio of death to incidence: 44.5 percent.

So cancer patients die from their disease at a rate about five times higher than diabetic patients. Ya think maybe insulin doesn’t have the same nasty habit of losing its effectiveness the way chemo often does?

False comparisons won’t save lives, but research funding for better cancer treatments will.

Bad karma = cancer

Oh puhleeeeeeze!  Some of the nicest people I’ve known got cancer. So nice, in fact, that we used to joke that compassion and a zest for living are risk factors.

Author Susan Sontag summed things up in her groundbreaking 1978 book Illness as Metaphor.

“Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning — that meaning invariably being a moralistic one. Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”

Sirens of ancient mythology

Not only does cancer attack nice people, at times it seems as though it’s the best of the lot that don’t make it, while worthless curmudgeons like me shuffle on. There’s nothing karmic in that, just a lousy roll of the dice.

Why do a majority of people continue to believe these myths despite ample evidence to the contrary? Because they wish it were so. They wish they could control a cruel, devastating, often fatal disease.

Here’s my wish: I wish these wishers were as outraged as I am about the criminally low levels of research funding for “orphan” cancers. Like pancreatic. Like ovarian. Like the type of breast cancer that hides from scans. I wish these wishers would gather their collective decency, good intentions and resources and break down the doors of Congress.

Do it for Randy Pausch. Do it for my friend Julie. Do it for yourself.