My most recent post on my GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT BREAST
CANCER deserve reiteration. To read the entire thing, you can go here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2014/11/guys-gotta-talk-about-9face-and-breast.html.
However, the most important point is below:
“adolescents from EVERY walk of life – internationals,
recent immigrants, born-and-raised-heres, white, black, Mexican, Ecuadorian,
rich and privileged, poor and homeless, and from every socioeconomic status and
race you can ask about. They all understood; they all offered various degrees
of sympathy (the ones who were grossed out covered their mouths in horror and
apologized), and there were others as well, who totally ignored the elephant in
the room (or the gauze on the face as the case
may be).
“I got the same response when it became general knowledge that
my wife had breast cancer.
“For whatever reason, this horrendous disease unites people
across all sorts of boundaries, imagined or real. This joins people into a
cohesive mass that says only one thing, “I know someone with cancer, and I hate
cancer.” It unites us in our Humanity through our vulnerability. Breast cancer,
skin cancer, liver cancer, leukemia, brain cancer, colon cancer, prostate
cancer...and every other kind of cancer can strike any person, any where, any
when. You can live in a New York penthouse and have 82.2 billion dollars and
you can get cancer. You can live in the Congo-Kinshasa and make nothing a year
and you can get cancer.
“At this time in history, the only thing all Humans share
unequivocally...is cancer.”
For all we trumpet our miraculous advances in this, that,
and the other thing, we do NOT have a handle on cancer. Certain kinds of
cancers we can successfully treat – childhood leukemia, breast cancer (if
discovered early enough), testicular cancer (again, if discovered early enough);
others are a death sentence – pancreatic cancer, brain cancer, lung and
bronchial cancer. I’ve known people who have recovered from and died from all
of the above cancers. When viewed from a certain perspective, it is grim
indeed.
The SF community, which has typically assumed that
cancer “will be cured in the future”, occasionally admits that science will NOT
discover the silver bullet for every disease known to mankind: “[Laura] Roslin
is told that she has breast cancer and a year to live. Roslin attends the
ceremony, and upon leaving, the Cylons attack the Twelve Colonies.” [reimaged
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA]. I can’t find another SF novel that has as a major theme
a character with incurable or inoperable cancer – so if anyone knows of one,
please share it below and I’ll integrate it into this essay.
So – the question is WHY, when so many Humans suffer from
some sort of cancer – don’t we offer solutions as readily as we offer paeans to
our eventual Transcendence? Why do we focus on our hard work at shattering the
light barrier? How about aliens – how many aliens do you know of in SF who “have
cancer”?
Is the assumption that cancer will be cured, if not tomorrow
then eventually, as much a myth as FTL, aliens, interstellar civilizations –
and therefore it’s not something we need to write about?
Perhaps some of us SHOULD start writing about it. Cancer is
a nearly universal Human condition. While Ebola makes better press copy, the
fact is that over eight million people on Earth die every year from lung,
liver, bowel, breast, and stomach cancer. Eight billion people and eight
million deaths by cancer each year means that ANY Human’s chance of knowing
someone who has died or will die of cancer this year is one chance in a
thousand.
By comparison, my personal chance of knowing someone who
died of Ebola SINCE 1976 are one chance in a million.
But the Ebola drama is more exciting, makes better fiction –
and we know that with proper care, just about everyone who can be treated in
the West will recover. There are no such happy statistics for cancer. No matter
how much money we throw at it; no matter how rich we are; no matter how
isolated a life we live; everyone and anyone can get cancer.
So how about it SF community – or even more interestingly
how about it Fantasy community: shall we write about it more often?
I WILL...
Resources: http://www.livescience.com/11041-10-deadliest-cancers-cure.html,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Roslin,
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/world/mortality/
mortality_624map.gif
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