The single most important word to make people sit up and take notice in health care apart from AIDS or HIV should be cancer!!!!!!!!!! The mere mention of the word is enough to bolster people to sit up and listen. But should we really accept all that is heard and said about the disease? Or should we use our gray cells and analyse the pros and cons and then decide? Should we believe all that is written about and said about the dreaded disease? Especially so when we receive emails telling us to forward the message to people around us!!!!!
In the U.S. many people inadvertently forward mails to their friends and well-wishers without realizing that they are helping the rumour mill working overtime! The rumours are fanned out through all means of communication and beyond a point fiction is taken for fact. People are scared to use under arm deo-sprays, shampoos, floor cleaners, cell-phones, microwave ovens, and electrical blankets when they read stories attributed to phony medical journals listing these products as potential cancer causers.However, medical experts are concerned that people believe such myths yet ignore research that clearly shows that some substances, such as tobacco, cause numerous forms of cancer.
"It never ceases to amaze me -- people keep reaching out and focusing on little things that may have minimal or no role in cancer," says Virginia Stark-Vancs, MD, an oncologist at Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas. "It's interesting to me that people will focus on under wire bras when these is no basis for this. Yet we have known for many years that smoking has a link to not only lung cancer but to many other types including bladder and kidney."
John Antoine, MD, chief of radiation oncology for the Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System, agrees. "The nicotine from smoking is both physically and psychologically addictive. It's as severe as cocaine. Smoking is one of the worst causes of cancer, especially lung and other cancers of the head and neck”. With regards to cell phones and their role in causing cancer, research is still underway and nothing conclusive has been established so far.
It is hoped that inspite of all people being interested in their life, common sense prevails and people learn to distinguish between fact and fiction. The bottom line as they say is alls well that ends well.
