The Anguish of the Cancer Age

The world has entered the cancer age. Roughly a quarter of the global population will eventually die of malignant tumors, which have become the leading cause of death today. The incidence of common cancers—lung, liver, gastric, breast, colorectal, cervical—is rising at an unprecedented rate. At the peak of industrialization and urbanization, nearly a third of people in Europe and America died of cancer; regions like Guangzhou in China are now approaching that ratio. Beijing adds 106 new cancer patients every day—more than the number of people who win 200 yuan in the Beijing welfare lottery.

Our chance of winning a big lottery prize is minuscule, but our chance of becoming a cancer patient is quite high. Twenty percent of China's rural population and twenty-five percent of its urban population are now stricken by cancer, touching countless families. In the coming decades, nearly every household will, tragically, have to deal with cancer.

In his preface to the Shanghan Lun, Zhang Zhongjing wrote that, within a little over ten years, two-thirds of his clan of more than two hundred died, over seventy percent of them from cold damage. Today, cancer has replaced infectious disease as humanity's greatest killer. China is in an unprecedented cancer age; the anguish cancer leaves on Chinese memory will be as deep as it once was on Europeans and Americans.

The heaviest price we have paid for development is perhaps the health lost to environmental pollution. One person's death grieves a whole family, and some households see more than one cancer patient. Tragically, this problem cannot be reversed in the short term and will keep worsening. Poor countries like Nepal and Bhutan consistently score high on happiness because they protect the environment and life has not been wholly materialized.

Which cancer will be conquered? We still see no hope of treating cancer as simply as a cold. Though many cancer patients escape the demon with medicine, far more, once diagnosed, still all too pitifully cannot escape death. Though all who live must die, dying before one's life expectancy brings endless suffering to patient and family alike.

Do we have ways to prevent cancer? With its causes still not fully understood, apparently not. In the face of cancer, all are equal. No one can confidently say he will escape the cancer demon; even doctors who have studied cancer for years cannot avoid being tangled by it. many famous anti-cancer physicians have themselves died of cancer.

Human life expectancy is indeed rising, but statistics show that the added years are not high-quality life. Chronic illnesses, especially advanced cancer, make the last years of many people's lives an existence of enormous suffering.

We hope this age passes quickly, that human wisdom advances beyond trading nature's destruction for material plenty, and that medicine progresses until cancer is finally conquered. But because most cancer cells arise from the body's own mutated stem cells and invade vital organs, even great therapeutic advances will, I fear, still inflict heavy damage on the human body.

There is little pure land left to hide in. Humanity is small, yet the collective destructiveness of ant-like humans is enormous. Choosing a healthy lifestyle and distancing ourselves from the cancer threat as much as possible may be the only thing we can do right now.