Cancer: Changing Horizons

The word itself sparks fear. It is one of those things that has always been. A killer like none other, with no cure yet in site. The disease comes in multiple forms. Some are super deadly, others are fairly easy to eradicate in this modern age. Luckily there are multiple types of treatment and remedies out there which means the general survival rate has shot up drastically over recent years. Yet, there are still too many people dying too often. This rate is exacerbated in other countries where there are worse medical facilities and healthcare isn’t as good.

There is always news regarding new treatments or tests. The treatments comes in multiple bouts depending on what is wrong with you. This ranges from invasive surgery to cut the cancer out, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, stem cell transplant and immunotherapy. The latter is one of the newest forms of treatment that has become available though is as yet still quite experimental and not always successful. It essentially is the practice of turning the bodies immune system against the cancer. There are various other new changes, such as the diagnoses of the symptoms of liposarcoma. The good thing is things are changing, more people are getting healed and the treatments becoming more accessible. However, this wasn’t always the case.

Cancer used to be seen as something taboo, people would not often talk about it which made it become harder to treat, and even when they did treat it was supremely expensive. The same rules in this day and age, even places where the government provides free healthcare, such as the UK, do not provide the best treatments for free. Often patients are left scrimping for money so that they can fly out to America and receive cutting edge treatment that may or may not work. The issue is that the costs are so high. To bring these down governments need to do more. This could either be testing people earlier and finding out about the cancer at an earlier point or instead forcing the pharmaceutical companies to comply and come down in treatment price. It is often thought they rip off the government with their high priced supply for treatment.

The prevention of cancer has ramped up too. Much less people smoke nowadays. This is a huge contributor to wards cancer. The less people with cancer means the more can be treated with advanced treatments. Preventing cancer takes the load off the health care services so that they can treat other people who could not have prevented it, where the cancer is genetic for example. The excessive eating of red meats and drinking alcohol have also be found to be carcinogenic too. Prevention means less treatment which means more money. As time goes on, it will only become better. Especially as the current cutting edge treatments become cheaper and more accessible. Unfortunately, that is all that is on offer until the geniuses at cancer research and other organisations come up with the long awaited cure.