CANCER...

[rogerluli]

http://www.caijing.com.cn/20080711/74197.shtml

 

The number of cancer deaths in China is staggering. Of course they aren't numbers...They're fathers, mothers, friends, children, wives and husbands. Smoking, lack of preventative health care and serious air and water pollution are to blame. Perhaps it is the Chinese people's ability to "eat bitterness" that keeps the hard truths under wraps...

[IllinoisDave]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

Edited July 15, 2008 by IllinoisDave (see edit history)

[Guest WenDylan]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

 

Might be a difficult task in place where so many things are very anti-humanitarian in a socialist system. That might be a good way to attract the wrong kind of attention to yourself, after all, you might be trying to bring down the government.

 

http://www.geocities.com/peteyeep/ch-pc-28-5.jpg

[SheLikesME?]

Me thunks Rogies Den Mother smoked....

[tsap seui]

Me thunks Rogies Den Mother smoked....

 

Puff...Yep, Douggie...puff, puff...I think that is what ruined ol' Cuzin' roGgiE a LOOOONG time ago. His den mother probably blew blue clouds of unfiltered Camel smoke in his face cause he couldn't learn how to tie a square knot...that, and he wuz probably the only kid in the troop without any merit badges....or merit, for that matter.

 

Course, his early ruination as a Chub Scout was probably when the den hen caught him with a Playboy in his backpack on a camp out.

 

tsap seui

[GZBILL]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

 

You'll inevitably get the response that Deng Xia Ping and Chairman Mao lived well into their 80's and were heavy smokers.

 

Actually, I don't think cancer rates are higher in China than they are in the US. Unless, of course, you have some statistics.

[shushuweiwei]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

 

Ah, I do this for a living, it usually doesn't work.

 

Joe

[shushuweiwei]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

 

You'll inevitably get the response that Deng Xia Ping and Chairman Mao lived well into their 80's and were heavy smokers.

 

Actually, I don't think cancer rates are higher in China than they are in the US. Unless, of course, you have some statistics.

 

It's not simple to compare. For Lung cancer we still have a higher incidence but we are just beginning to fall over the last decade because of anti-smoking campaigns that started in the early 60's. Despite lowering the smoking incidence over that time we didn't see the incidence drop for many decades. China is on their way to passing us soon and they presumably will continue up as we did for a long time after they decide to take steps to lower the incidence of smoking.

 

For other cancers they are way ahead of us already (Liver, especially). You are probably right that overall incidence of all cancers may be close right now (I can't find an overall number for China right now) but we are going in opposite directions. Most cancers are declining in the US while most are rising in China.

 

The anecdote about Deng and Mao is something that really fascinates me and that is just how humans evaluate risks in general. For certain things that are dangerous people say things like this. But people don't cite the few people who survived a parachute not opening as evidence for the fun of unassisted skydiving. People will say they don't want a certain medicine because a friend had a serious side effect but they rarely say I don't go in cars because a friend was severely injured in an accident. People will refuse a treatment for a child that is likely to have great benefit due to the risk of side effects but not think twice about taking an often higher risk to put the child in the car for a benefit as small as picking up a video.

 

It's fascinating how our minds process these risks differently and come up with decisions that have no relation to the actual risks and benefits. I've read a few neurophysiologic explanantions for why our brains are so poor at assessing risks but I'm still not sure we have a clear understanding.

Joe

[GZBILL]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

 

You'll inevitably get the response that Deng Xia Ping and Chairman Mao lived well into their 80's and were heavy smokers.

 

Actually, I don't think cancer rates are higher in China than they are in the US. Unless, of course, you have some statistics.

 

It's not simple to compare. For Lung cancer we still have a higher incidence but we are just beginning to fall over the last decade because of anti-smoking campaigns that started in the early 60's. Despite lowering the smoking incidence over that time we didn't see the incidence drop for many decades. China is on their way to passing us soon and they presumably will continue up as we did for a long time after they decide to take steps to lower the incidence of smoking.

 

For other cancers they are way ahead of us already (Liver, especially). You are probably right that overall incidence of all cancers may be close right now (I can't find an overall number for China right now) but we are going in opposite directions. Most cancers are declining in the US while most are rising in China.

 

The anecdote about Deng and Mao is something that really fascinates me and that is just how humans evaluate risks in general. For certain things that are dangerous people say things like this. But people don't cite the few people who survived a parachute not opening as evidence for the fun of unassisted skydiving. People will say they don't want a certain medicine because a friend had a serious side effect but they rarely say I don't go in cars because a friend was severely injured in an accident. People will refuse a treatment for a child that is likely to have great benefit due to the risk of side effects but not think twice about taking an often higher risk to put the child in the car for a benefit as small as picking up a video.

 

It's fascinating how our minds process these risks differently and come up with decisions that have no relation to the actual risks and benefits. I've read a few neurophysiologic explanantions for why our brains are so poor at assessing risks but I'm still not sure we have a clear understanding.

Joe

 

Yes, risk analysis is something people have problems with. Next time someone gives me the line about Chairman Mao smoking I'll use your analogy about unassisted skydiving.

 

I've actually seen cancer wards in Chinese hospitals and they are, as I'm sure they must be back in the States, depressing places. Totally depressing.

 

One thing I've always thought of as a serious disadvantage for any hospitalization in China is the lack of basic services to such an extent that patients' families must be present almost 24x7 to handle mundane tasks such as cleaning the hopsital room or helping the family member use the bathroom. It is not at all uncommon for family members to sleep in the same hospital room as the patient. This happens even more so on cancer wards here and, when you think about it, it isn't such a bad thing after all. At least people here have family surrounding them when the inevitable happens. It's not like in the US where you need to wait for the weekend for your spouse and kids to have a day off from work before they visit.

[pbatt]

Actually everyone in the world dies of the same thing.Heart failure. When your heart stops beating you die.

This was explained to me by a Mayo Clinic doctor when my wife died from heart failure from cancer complications.I asked him why he didnt state on the death certificate she died of cancer.

His answer was" She died of heart failure,which in turn was complicated by the cancer"

[IllinoisDave]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

 

You'll inevitably get the response that Deng Xia Ping and Chairman Mao lived well into their 80's and were heavy smokers.

 

Actually, I don't think cancer rates are higher in China than they are in the US. Unless, of course, you have some statistics.

I wasn't really comparing China and the US. Just making a general observation about smoking and the senseless death it causes.

 

Actually, I saw a table (lost it when I had to re-boot) that showed that the US was something like 9th in the world with around 300-something cancer deaths in 100,000. Rog's article cited 136 in 100,000 for China. So they're still behind us per capita but gaining unfortunately.

[Guest WenDylan]

That is just sad. And so much of it preventable. Makes you want to travel around China,or the world even, grab people by the shoulders and scream STOP SMOKING...IT KILLS PEOPLE!!

 

You'll inevitably get the response that Deng Xia Ping and Chairman Mao lived well into their 80's and were heavy smokers.

 

Actually, I don't think cancer rates are higher in China than they are in the US. Unless, of course, you have some statistics.

 

I think China has "cheaper" made cigarettes, and the US has some pure grade products. Death is a little easier to achieve in a society where we watchdog and control the value and quality of our goods. Kinda sucks?

 

It's like those rice soups. Here in the US you know it would be made to good standards, however when you import the same product and you don't really know what factory it came from, and no one is really watching the factory anyways... you might end up just eating cardboard. I guess that's the trick to living longer though?

[Guest Mike and Lily]

We likely have more cancer deaths due to diet in this country, so that makes up for the deaths we don't have due to smoking.

[rogerluli]

Sorry Dylan...The pics were a bit "over the top" shall we say...

[Guest WenDylan]

Sorry Dylan...The pics were a bit "over the top" shall we say...

 

 

(That's ok, I'd rather not look at it myself. It just happens that I get too many donut jokes as cop )