Battling Cancer

What is Wilms’ Tumor?

Primarily a childhood cancer, Wilms’ Tumor is a solid tumor or nephroblastoma found on the kidney. The disease was named after Max Wilms, a German physician who studied the tumor.

The tumor begins in utero when immature kidney cells do not develop properly and instead grow out of control into a mass on one kidney and sometimes both kidneys.

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During his 1970 inaugural address, American President Richard Nixon declared a War on Cancer. Promising to allocate at least $100 million in funding to investigate the causes for what was then the second-leading cause of death in the United States, Nixon followed through in 1971 by signing the National Cancer Act. Key objectives of this act included infusing basic sciences research funding, ramping up clinical trials and making the National Cancer Institute a free-standing body under the National Institutes of Health.

Nearly forty years later, physicians and scientists are making great strides in better understanding the etiology, management and treatment in all forms of cancer. Recently, the American Society for Clinical Oncology released a report entitled, Clinical Cancer Advances 2007: Major Research Advances in Cancer Treatment, Prevention, and Screening. This annual review, which is available as a .pdf, podcast, and slideshow at the People Living With Cancer website, includes the following highlights: 

Primary Liver Cancer Patients Get the Option for Systemic Treatment: Until recently, surgical techniques were the first line of treatment in liver cancer patients because response to chemotherapy was so poor. In 2007, results of a large study showed that advanced liver cancer using sorafenib (Nevaxar), a targeted chemotherapeutic, lived 44 percent longer than patients who did not. More →

Hi everyone!  I’m back in Texas, and it’s suprisingly cold and rainy here.  We actually turned our heater on rather than the A/C for the first time, and the shock to our temperature control set the smoke alarm off.  Annoying, yes, but it’s nice to know that it’s not just my burnt pumpkin pies that are putting the smoke detecter to work :-) 

Anyway, back to business.  While scouring the internet for the latest developments in cancer as I so faithfully do, I came across an interesting story on an online magazine devoted to London Bikers covering an upcoming book that attempts to draw a link between motorcycles and cancer.  

The claims come from a new book by Randall Dale Chipkar entitled, Motorcycle Cancer:  Are Motorcycles Killing Us With Cancers of the Prostate, Colon, Kidney, Bone, Etc?  According to the book’s promotional website, extremely low frequency electromagnetic field radiation is the silent culprit for a host of different cancers.  

While I generally avoid travelling on anything that doesn’t have a protective steel cage around it, my husband’s family is deeply embedded in motorcycle culture.  Harleys, dirt bikes, rides, and races — they’ve done it all, so I have a vested interest.  But clunky headline aside, I just don’t buy what Chipkar’s selling.  While it makes for a good spook tactic (a silent monster — between my legs!), there is not one single study to date that links motorcycle electromagnetic radiation and cancer on PubMed, the single largest repository for peer-reviewed medical studies and scientific journal articles.  There is, however, one 2004 Taiwanese study that correlates motorcycle exhaust to hormonal effects in breast cancer cell lines and female rats  (Take home message to all who ride:  try not to breathe the fumes.) More →