cells. However, we still need to continue efforts to independently analyze the causes of other cancers.
I thought I had a small lump in my breasts because of breastfeeding caused by breastfeeding, the actual I have had two breast cancer. I was shocked by this, and complained to the radiologist: "My family does not have such a case! My life is also very healthy! Why do I have breast cancer?
For the question of "why I have breast cancer," my relatives and friends living in the United States think that there are only one reason: genetic defects; however, living in the past decade living in Haiti, the local friends kept me Puzzled: Who is so sick with me? Is an angry colleague? A sworn creature of revenge flames? Simply out of jealousy They are sure that somebody wants me to be sick.
After listening to these words, I from the initial diagnosis of the confusion in the wake up, I began to anthropological scholars professional look to the cancer problem.
My first understanding is that the answers between Americans and Haitians are not very different. These answers define that breast cancer is occurring in some people - some are dragged down by family genes and some are jealous The attack.
The incidence of cancer is on the rise
One of the eight American women has breast cancer. Some cancer has tortured nearly half of American women - yes, one of the two women has cancer.
The existence of this phenomenon is not only because of our longer life. Since the 1970s, young women suffering from malignant breast cancer cases increased by 2% per year.
There is no reliable data on the development trend of cancer incidence in Haiti. But we do know that the incidence of cancer is rising sharply; not only Haiti, the world is also the case; especially young people. We also know that the rising trend of cancer incidence and accompanied by the development of toxins, pollutants, diet and lifestyle are closely linked.
Thinking about these data, I realized that I asked the wrong question, the United States and Haitian close friends to provide the answer is not complete.
I would like to ask the question is not why I will get breast cancer, but why we are gradually suffering from breast cancer.
Overall understanding
As an anthropologist, I will proceed as a whole on social issues, and I try to understand the big background that is overlooked by overly concerned with a single variable (such as a gene, jealousy). The holistic approach encourages us to transcend the causal linear relationship during observation and observe the forces that influence our behavior, condition and result together.
Anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain equates cancer with an "general social fact" in his book Malignant. She said that cancer is "a movement whose effect will split some seemingly independent living areas and thus connect them." Cancer has become the main cause of death in mankind, which dates back to the era of industrialization, that society, economy, politics Comprehensive development and the era of mankind to "developed" the world.
We are surrounded by carcinogens; it appears in the pesticide-treated agricultural products, hormone-treated meat and daily necessities, as well as flame retardant fabrics, furniture, cosmetics, flue gas and filled the world of plastic The Cancer penetrates all aspects of our basic necessities.
Yes, it is very difficult to detect all the factors and find out what factors are causing damage to the human body. We can not adjust the carcinogenic environment to randomized controlled trials. In the carcinogenic environment, we are exposed, no one can be spared.
Then again, if we saw the trees, but not the forest, still can not solve the problem. This is similar to the discussion on climate change. To address climate change, can not change through the system should be a way of life on the planet as a goal of a comprehensive policy. We need not only to investigate and regulate specific hazardous substances, such as cigarettes; we also need to study the immediate and cumulative results of lifetime exposure to carcinogens and contaminants.
Why are cross-culture and people in different societies tend to focus on individuals and treat individuals as analytic units?
One of the reasons is that such a practice is simpler than focusing on a society, politics, or ecosystem. The blame for a person or a gene also unifies the cultural metaphor for the various diseases: the disease is the consequence of the individual rather than the failure of society. It is clear that the blame on the tortured person, so as to protect healthy people, so that healthy people do not have to face the individual fear of the disease. But it severely limits our ability to understand and eliminate the collective epidemic, cancer is one of them.
It is true that inheritance has an effect on cancer, but this effect is exaggerated. Not more than 10% of breast cancer patients suffer from genetic mutations; the number of so-called breast cancer gene mutations (BRCA 1 and 2) is less than 5%. I am 90% of that part of the people.
However, most of the funds for medical cancer research are focused on genetic factors, and only 15% of the National Cancer Institute budget is applied to environmental oncology.
Not a demon, but a series of annoying factors
Some aspects are true for the explanation provided by Haitian friends. I do not believe that cancer is caused by demon. But the demon method to people as the source of the disease, and as a goal, can really enhance people's attention to the relevant social factors, to reduce its concern for genetic inheritance. Jealousy confirms the extremely real connection between social inequality, compassion, stress and disease. But this explanation still can not narrow or reverse the carcinogenic environment from the developed world.
During my years in Haiti, I witnessed changes in diet: from different grains and potatoes to imported rice, pasta and desserts, and those that increase the risk of insulin secretion and breast cancer. Plastic also invaded the country.
Many people routinely drink plastic bags of water, when the plastic bags are exposed to the sun, they will degrade and reveal the carcinogenic exogenous estrogen.
If we always think that cancer will only happen to others, we can not ask a bigger question, let alone answer these questions.
When the idea was lit in my mind, my kind and intelligent doctor poked my doubts about the environment with a helpless shrug - he said, "You can not flee the world.
We can not escape this world, but we create this world. In 2010, the US President's Cancer Panel said the contaminants were wildly growing in the human world, just for the acute, catastrophic epidemic.
Recently, the rapid development of the world's rapid growth in the incidence of cancer is indeed terrible, it tells us: once the world pollution less. But can we go back?