Cancer: Its History and Treatment in US Society

Cancer has been selected as the subject of this paper because it is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Every year, almost a million new cases of cancer are diagnosed in the United States (Freed, 1984). After a brief history of the disease and its treatment in our society, this paper will focus on what goes wrong at the cellular level in cancer (e.g. kinds of cells damaged and how the damage occurs), how changes at the cellular level affect the rest of the body, symptoms of the disease, how the disease can be prevented and treated, and possibilities of a future cure.

Cancer predates our society. Archaeological evidence indicates that cancer is more than a million years old. Evidence of bone cancer was found in Egyptian mummies from the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, and 1,500 year old manuscripts describe cancer and primitive forms of treatment like placing arsenic pastes on cancerous growths, cautery, and plant and herbal remedies. An early Russian remedy involved placing patients on a grape diet. Cancer remains a baffling malady. It was not until 1761 that a carcinogenic substance, tobacco snuff, was first reported. One reason for the difficulty of understanding cancer is that there are several hundred different types of cancer - e.g. cancer of the oral cavity, lung cancer, breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, adenocarcinoma of the stomach, skin cancer (basal cell and squamous cell), uterine cancer, cervical cancer, prostatic cancer, urinary tract cancer, leukem

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t could all transform a protooncogene into an oncogene. Phosphorylation regulates enzyme activity, and oncogene proteins are known to phosphorylate proteins that function in regulation of growth-stimulating substances such as platelet-derived growth factor and epidermal growth factor (Weinberg, 1983). These cancerous cellular changes may affect the way the whole body functions or cause very localized changes. In cases of colorectal cancer there are a variety of polyposis syndromes ranging from benign hyperplastic polyps that do not go malignant and premalignant sessile vinous adenomas to adenomatous polyps, Gardener's syndrome (polyps unevenly distributed, dental abnormalities, epidermoid cysts, mesenteric or peritoneal fibrosis, keloids, desmoids, osteomas), Peutz-Jegher's syndrome (multiple polyps and deep pigmentation of fingers, mucosa and lips) and Turcot's syndrome (malignant neurologic tumors and colonic polyps). If the polyps are not treated (e.g. by resection), then colonic, rectal and colorectal carcinomas are likely to develop (Freed, 1984). In the case of a bronchiogenic carcinoma the bodily changes may be reflected in symptoms like malaise, dyspepsia, weight loss and chronic cough with chest x-rays revealing lu

Category: Medical - C