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I agree with you as to the potential complexity and "individual" nature of cancer due to the mass of factors. The more one reads the more complex it evidently all is.
This all brings me back to thinking that a variable that can be controlled and is repeated reported to have impact, in at least some instances, is diet. No it will not change genetic predisposition etc, but even there may have some mitigating impact.
Balancing omega threes and sixes, inclusion of greens high coulored veg, pulses to help elimination low salt and keep overall fats down with the jury out on dairy (re calcium absorbtion, and possible hormones and growth factors in dairy v CLAs etc) seem to common themes in may books on a wide range of medical conditions. Plants are veritable pharmacies which our bodies have evolved to use over very long time frames. Fats are often repored as an evolutionary factor, acting as hormones, and trials have shown the very significantly change gene experession based on type. (It takes time for the body to adapt, at least three months for example to see a change in breast tissue fats.)
Clearly some gentic factors will not be amenable to diet, and there are no guarantees but it comes with limited side effects, and provides the body with an immensly comlex and rich mix of natures pharaceuticals, and is the fuel the body has grown to need (probably the more diverse the better).
I "forced" myself to watch a TV series on human disection, which I expected to make me cringe, but instead in an odd way I was fascinated. How for example did this visually inellegant amorphous unprepossessing set of internal plumbing maintain itself and convert food into energy and all the body needs to maintain itself. A sense of wonderment set in, combined with a sense of the arrogance of man if we were in any way suggesting we have really got to grips with the complexity of it all, or were doing much more than poking at it with a sharp stick (a very significant step from a sledge hammer) to see what happened, and if it was something vaguely benificial regarding it as a treatment. For clarification I am not referring to treatment of microorganisms, viruses, or the impact of external factors where huge medical progess has been made, but the bodies own internal process which is what is being "mechaniced with" in cancer.
And from this came an unformed conclusion that as a start we really should be doing our best to ensure that this immensly complex organism (us) generally got what it needed and had adapted to over a very long time in food terms, and that we were being unreasonable if we expected something as comlex as us, which was used to generally running a a very wide variety of top quality fuel (with some reserve capacity), to run on crude or heavly adulterated fuel, or a predominace of things it has not seen before.
RB
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