The Pain of a "Cancer Second-Generation": I Have Watched Cancer Run Rampant and Reincarnate Among Us

The day before yesterday, a cancer patient's family member I have known for years came to see me from Nanjing. I thought she was bringing her elder sister to me—her sister had previously come to me for lung adenocarcinoma—but unexpectedly she came alone. Her first words on entering were that she had brought me a lung-cancer patient who had not undergone surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and that person was herself; she had been diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma a few months earlier.

This is the third lung-cancer patient in her family. The first was her mother, then her elder sister. Now she herself, who had shouldered the responsibility of caring for her mother and sister, has also been stricken with lung adenocarcinoma.

We have known each other for about ten years. Learning that she had lung adenocarcinoma, my heart was deeply stung. I felt the deepest sympathy for her plight, and she trusted me completely. She decided to entrust herself to me, leaving it to me to determine the length of the rest of her life.

She is only forty-eight this year. I still remember that six or seven years ago, when I passed through Nanjing on business, the three sisters warmly invited me to their home. Back then she told me she had once felt that living past forty would be enough, and after passing forty she felt it would also be quite nice to live past sixty. This time she asked me whether I had the confidence to keep her alive past sixty. I had no answer; I do not know whether I have the ability to keep her alive past sixty.

Her story is very like my own: I too took up TCM anti-cancer research because my mother developed gastric cancer. I left the standard Western medical treatment of my mother to the Western doctors in the hospital, but Western medicine could not solve all her problems, so I used the TCM knowledge I had learned to care for her.

This Nanjing lung-cancer patient, like me, learned to care for her own relatives after her mother and sister developed lung cancer, and remains single to this day.

I cannot help grieving for her. When a hare dies, a fox mourns it; creatures of the same kind sorrow for one another. She and I are both "cancer second-generation." Many oncology monographs I have read state clearly that the immediate relatives of cancer patients develop cancer at a rate more than five times that of ordinary people.

For years this statistical figure has haunted my life like an inescapable nightmare, deeply affecting me. I am especially careful in my own life, not wanting to become one of the cancer patients. Many cancer-stricken families suffer cruel fates, with several members falling ill and a gray pall hanging over their lives.

Two years ago, when I was at Hangzhou Railway Station about to travel to Beijing, one of my gastric-cancer patients came to the station for a follow-up. We sat in a KFC, looking out through the glass. I told him: statistically, 21% of rural Chinese and 25% of urban Chinese—about a third of people in first- and second-tier cities—will eventually develop cancer. So look at this bustling crowd outside; many look healthy now, but one day they too will become cancer patients. How frightening, and how sad.

Unexpectedly, my words came true. This summer he brought his aunt to see me; his aunt had by then been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Over the years I have seen many cases of several cancer patients across generations of one family, and many cases of husband and wife both developing cancer. I cannot help but feel awe at the power of genes and the side effects of bad habits.

Being overweight is a factor closely linked to cancer. A recent report in The Lancet points out that nearly 2.3 billion children and adults worldwide are overweight, more than 150 million children are stunted, and it warns that undernutrition and obesity will affect generations. This means that about a third of the global population eats an unhealthy diet.

As the economy has developed, human food structures and eating habits have changed greatly. More and more meat, sugar, saturated and trans fats, and high-salt foods are ruining our health. Yet our whole human species is mired in an unhealthy dietary structure and habits, unable to extricate itself.

A growing number of cancer patients has made cancer less shocking. Today we regard cancer as a common disease. Cancer hospitals develop rapidly, medical buildings shoot up, ever larger and more grand, yet they still cannot cope with the rising tide of patients. Hospital corridors are lined with beds, and patients squeezed in as extras can only make do in the hallways. Many critically ill end-stage cancer patients are turned away by doctors and can only receive end-of-life hospice care at home.

And I, only forty, have already watched cancer reincarnate across generations of one family. Many times, after setbacks, I have felt despondent and wanted to leave the medical profession. But then I think: if one day I myself fall seriously ill, whom will I turn to for treatment?

China's medical resources are strained: we have only 2.59 clinicians per thousand people, about half that of the United States. And of those 2.59 clinicians, more than half lack a bachelor's degree; among those who do have one, most are not elite talent. So China's high-quality medical resources are relatively scarce. We need more outstanding people to enter the medical profession and devote their lives to advancing China's health cause.

For whom does the death knell of cancer toll? We "cancer second-generation" are a typical high-risk group. Steve Jobs's son, grieving his father's cancer, did not go into business like Jobs; instead he became an oncologist, devoting himself to cancer research.

Today it is someone else who has cancer; tomorrow it might be ourselves. Many people in the world are doing their utmost to research cancer, yet it has still not been thoroughly conquered. As a world-class medical puzzle, it still requires countless cancer researchers, myself included, to devote a lifetime of effort to studying and solving it.