How Many People Has Cancer Killed?

Cancer is considered to be the second leading cause of death for Americans. A total of 1,529,560 new cancer cases and 569,490 deaths from cancer were estimated to have occurred in the United States in 2010, according to the American Cancer Society. Among men, the top three cancer diagnoses are prostate cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer. The leading types of cancer among women are breast cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) lists the top ten killer cancers (deaths between 2003 and 2007) as follows:

1. Lung and bronchial cancer: 792,495 lives
2. Colon and rectal cancer:268,783 lives
3. Breast cancer: 206,983 lives
4. Pancreatic cancer: 162,878 lives
5. Prostate cancer: 144,926 lives.
6. Leukemia: 108,740 lives
7. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma: 104,407 lives
8. Liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancer: 79,773 lives
9. Ovarian cancer: 73,638 lives
10. Esophageal cancer: 66,659 lives

In addition to the diagnosed cases of cancer, there are tens of thousands of underprivileged people who have cancer, but will not even receive a diagnosis because they cannot afford health insurance or a visit to the doctor. Cancer is not just a word, but also a statement that refers to abnormal or unusual behavior of the body’s cells.

However, in quite a different context, cancer is referred to as a star sign. When someone says you are a ‘Cancer’, are you going to tremble with fear of dying? Such a reaction is unlikely, because your interpretation of being of the Cancer sign does not imply that you have cancer, the illness. But if your doctor called you into his office and told you that you had cancer, you would most likely feel shocked, paralyzed, numb, terrified, hopeless, or all of the above. The word ‘cancer’ has the potential to play a very disturbing and precarious role in your life, one that is capable of delivering a death sentence, and actually execute it.

Although being a cancer patient seems to start with the diagnosis of cancer, its causes may have been present for many years prior to the patient feeling ill. Yet within a brief moment, the word ‘cancer’ can turn someone’s entire world upside down. Who or what in this world has bestowed this simple word or statement with such great power that it can preside over life and death? Or does it really possess this power? Could our collective, social conviction that cancer is a killer disease, along with the trauma-generating, aggressive treatments that follow diagnosis, actually be mainly responsible for the current dramatic escalation of cancer in the Western hemisphere?

Such a thought is too far fetched, you might reply! I state with absolute conviction that cancer can have no power or control over you, unless the beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, thoughts, and feelings you have, allow it. Would you be as afraid of cancer if you knew what caused it or at least understood what its underlying purpose was? Unlikely so! If the truth were told, you would probably do everything you could to remove the causes of the cancer and thereby lay the ground for the body to heal itself. A little knowledge – which I also call ignorance – is, in fact, a dangerous thing.

Almost everyone, at least in the industrialized world, knows that drinking water from a filthy pond or polluted lake can cause life-threatening diarrhea. Yet, relatively few people realize that holding on to resentment, anger, and fear, avoiding exposure to the sun which causes vitamin D deficiency, not getting enough sleep on a regular basis, holding a cell phone to your head for an hour each day, being regularly exposed to X-rays, mammograms or CAT scans, or eating junk foods, chemical additives, and artificial sweeteners is no less dangerous than drinking polluted water. These ‘habits’ of life may just take a little longer to kill a person than poison or tiny amoeba do, but there is no more doubt that they can.

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This is an excerpt from my book CANCER IS NOT A DISEASE! – IT’S A SURVIVAL MECHANISM