Could cancer be the real terrorist?

(First in a three-part series).
Here’s a combination of statistics to ponder.             

- Americans who have died of cancer since Sept. 11, 2001? More than three million.

- Americans who have been killed by foreign terrorists on U.S. soil over the same time period? Zero. (I’m not counting the victims of the D.C. snipers or the anthrax killer, because those were considered domestic).

Which is not to say that terrorists aren’t out there, of course, or that we may not face another high-casualty attack in the near future. Still, it seems that our priorities about what to fear most have become detached from reality.

The last time I checked, there were a half-dozen CSI-type shows on television. Meanwhile, every other book on the paperback racks is either a murder mystery or a serial killer horror story.
Yet how many people have you known well who were murdered, as opposed to those who died of cancer?

I would even go so far as to say that, given the choice, I would prefer to be unexpectedly annihilated by a terrorist bomb than to die slowly and painfully from a debilitating disease. If nothing else, it’s a lot cheaper.

The terrorist analogy is quite appropriate for cancer, though. Modern medical science has come a long way toward beating back the outside invaders to our bodies, even though we still go into group hysterics over such new potential plagues as the bird flu. Cancer, on the other hand, is the enemy within. We even call small groups of terrorists “cells.”

I’ve read that cancer deaths declined in both 2006 and 2007, and that people are living longer with it. I’ve also read that the numbers should start to spike again as baby boomers move into their prime cancer years (that would be me).

All I know is that at this moment, three people with whom I’m personally acquainted are fighting various forms of this disease. Another died last week, one the week before.

On a recent visit to the Centra Health’s new Pearson Cancer Center (as a reporter, not a patient), I asked Dr. Matt Foster if he thought there were more cases of cancer now than, say, 100 years ago. He said he wasn’t sure, because cancer often wasn’t properly diagnosed back then.

When you think about it, though, most of our jobs today are sedentary. We drive from place to place, we sit in front of computers. We eat, drink and breathe in chemicals that were unknown a generation ago, much less a century. Maybe some of this is giving these mutant cells a foothold.

In any event, it doesn’t seem to us like something we can actually fight. You can’t attack cancer with cruise missiles. You can’t call the police on it. Even worse, it can lurk within our bodies for years before we see any symptoms.

Given that, our human tendency is to say: “It’s the luck of the draw. I just hope I don’t get it.”

We know that heavy smoking or working in coal mines or around chemicals can increase our chances, as does a bad family medical history. Still, we hear all the time of people not affected by those risk factors who caught cancer anyway. It all leads to numbness and apathy.

That’s why I was so inspired by a visit last Saturday morning to the Relay for Life at Heritage High School.

The bright 9 a.m. sunshine lent an aura of hope to the proceedings. It was also was a bit rough on the eyes of those who had stayed up most of the night, diehards like Christy Fleenor.

I had written a Mother’s Day column about Christy and her mom, Shirley Breeden, and about the fact that Fleenor’s Relay for Life team, the Spice Squirrels, had been the leading money raiser. The day after that article ran, Shirley Breeden died.

When I saw Christy Fleenor last Saturday, she looked drawn but determined.

“This is a way to fight back,” she said. “It’s a way to do something.”

All night, people who had raised pledge money plodded around the Heritage track in endless circles as music played to keep up their spirits. The last song that came blaring out over the loudspeakers on that Saturday morning was “Eye of the Tiger,” and those who remained hit the track again for a “victory lap.”

What if we were able to tap into that spirit on a national scale? What if we were to declare a national War on Cancer, pouring even more money into research and making cancer testing affordable and convenient for everyone?

I know I’d feel safer.

Next: Jeff and Steve: Two lives cut short.