Dispelling cancer myths
By Richard Saltus
Misinformation flourishes in a soil of fear and helplessness. Surveys have singled out cancer as the illness most feared by Americans, even though heart disease kills hundreds of thousands more annually. There's even a name for this fear when it becomes extreme: cancerophobia. Because the root causes of cancer have been so difficult to unravel, people sometimes feel there's little they can do to protect themselves.
This isn't so, but half-truths and outright myths about cancer and its treatment continue to cloud the picture, even as some forms of the disease have been virtually conquered and scientists' understanding of malignancy has dramatically deepened in the last decade. Those unfamiliar with cancer may exaggerate their risks of developing and dying from it. They may worry too much about unproven causes while ignoring steps they can take toward prevention. And still, in some families and some communities, people shy away from the very word.
"It was not talked about," says Karen Burns White, assistant director for minority initiatives for the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, in recalling the custom of her African-American family. "They would say, 'Uncle T. R. has the Big C,'" Burns White remembers — a practice she says still lingers among some older people of color.
Myths about cancer cut across populations, however. As overseer of medical content for the American Cancer Society, Ted Gansler, MD, fields some of the questions flowing in from two million calls to the Society's National Cancer Information Center each year. Some of them crop up repeatedly as a result of chain e-mails. "Most of these are about bogus cures or risk factors," he says. For instance, one contains a false statement claiming that shampoo and toothpaste cause cancer, referring to research that doesn't exist.
To help set the record straight, Paths of Progress cites some of the most common myths and misperceptions about cancer and offers responses from DFCI and other authorities.
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