[summer_gphib]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

I don't eat fast food, so I'm not going to comment on that. I also don't know if getting cancer from having oral sex is entirely true, so I won't debate that either. However, avoiding cigarette smoke, harmful chemicals, unhealthy food, etc. are all causes of cancer, so I don't disagree with you there. But that's not always the case with cancer. Cancer is just abnormal cell growth which is the result of mutations in certain genes. It's just that cancer cells have the ability to break free from the tissue of which they are a part. Most normal cells stay put, stuck to each other and their surroundings. Unless they are attached to something, they cannot grow and multiply. If they become detached, they pretty much commit kind of like a suicide by a process known as apoptosis. But in cancer cells the normal self destruct instructions do not work, and they can grow and multiply without being attached to anything. This allows them to invade the rest of the body, travelling via the bloodstream to start more tumors elsewhere (metastasis). You also need to know that some people are born with an increased risk of cancer because they inherit a mutation in a gene important for cell growth or for repairing damaged DNA. This means that all the cells in their body have already taken one step down the multistep pathway that turns a normal cell into a cancerous one, so just because a person doesn't smoke, eats healthy, doesn't do drugs etc, doesn't mean she/he is exempt from getting cancer and dying from it. I know because I deal with cancer patients at least twice a month. They're animals, but it invades the body in somewhat the same fashion.

Thank you. Cancer strikes many people who live "healthy lifestyles." And as an advocate for Pet Cancer Awareness thank you for the work you do. My Forrest is still hanging in there. 10 weeks ago they told us "days not weeks, but it's Forrest, so who knows."