What is going on? Pancreatic cancer cases locally

[Summerthyme]

Guys... what in the world is wrong with the American diet, or lifestyle, or *something*? We just heard of the FOURTH case of advanced, metastatic pancreatic cancer in a friend here... all of them are men in their mid-50's, and none of them will live much longer.

I mean, our circle of friends and aquaintences is SMALL... we're sort of semi-hermits up here on our farm, and to have this many people we know dying of what used to be a VERY rare disease is worrisome.

I'd love to know what's going on! Is it HFCS, or maybe artificial sweeteners? Each of these men had different lifestyles... a couple were small farmers (not big crop farms which use a ton of pesticides) one ran a small beef farm and the local butcher shop, one worked in town.

This is getting pretty weird.

Summerthyme

[Cassandra]

Isn't that what's called a "Cluster?"

Is Monsanto involved in anything in the neighborhood?

[Plainsman]

water?

[jed turtle]

until i hear otherwise, i'd assume HFCS and in soda in particular, which is why i gave up the beverage / addiction of choice, Moxie. although i have been known to fall off the wagon a time or two...

[Godwit]

Two possibilities are arsenic and cigarettes.

Some other info on causes at -- http://pathology.jhu.edu/pc/nfptr/research.php

[Summerthyme]

I have no idea if it would be considered a "cluster" or if anyone is keeping track of this stuff. They lived at least a few miles apart... not like they were all in the same neighborhood. All were nonsmokers...

Two would have been on their own water wells; the other two lived in town. There aren't any known "natural" contaminants of water in this area, like arsenic.

Jed.... my gut says the same as yours. It seems that something in the diet is stressing the pancreas to the point where it begins to cause cellular damage and mutations.

The reason this caught my interest (beyond the individual tragedies that this represents) is that it's not so easy to say "well, it's just that people are living longer, so they live long enough to develop cancer"... that's true enough in prostate cancer, but these are all relatively young men. Something we're eating is poisoning us!

Summerthyme

[gandrimp]

Cancer is a big money maker. Cancer is a scary illness, and people will just say fix me, versus getting a second opinion. My local hospital (all Dr's in our area are tied to the hospital in some form) has been called barbaric by several hospitals within a 4 hours drive. All cancer related. My dad died of cancer nearly 4 years ago, he would not even think about getting a second opinion.

[gandrimp]

My Grandmother fell back in the winter, she is a tough ole girl at 93, who will still walk circles around a lot of 20 y/o. She had a knot come up in her lower rib area. The first thing the dr say's " it's very possibly cancer". She said no more test, no treatment either. The whole family's planning her funeral. A month goes by, the knot has gone away. Money maker, she just didn't fall for it.

[Summerthyme]

gandrimp... these guys ALL got at least one "second opinion". Believe me, there just isn't much anyone CAN do for them. (and I commend the doctors at Roswell for NOT treating the guy we just heard about... if it were "all about the money", they could have made a few thousand bucks putting in a port and giving him a few rounds of chemo. With his serious liver involvement, it wouldn't have done him any good, and I commend them for being honest about that)

This isn't about what medical care they got or are getting... this is one cancer that has almost ZERO chance of any sort of remission, much less cure, especially at the stages it is usually discovered at. I will grant that with the quality of our local doctors, it's entirely likely that their diagnosis would have come a little sooner if they lived in a less depressed/backwards area. But even at stage 1A (localized to the pancreas) the 5 year survival rate is only 14%. Overall survival rates for advanced disease are 1%.

Obviously, this isn't a disease you want to try to treat... if you don't want to die a nasty death way too early, we need to figure out what is causing it...

As far as your grandmother's "diagnosis"... she may need a new doctor. Then again, he was right... it WAS possible it was cancer, although pretty darned unlikely, given the history of a fall. And while it's possible he was "just out for the money", it's also true that there are standards of care which doctors must follow if they don't want to lose multimillion dollar malpractice suits, or lose their licenses. And following up on a "lump" on a bone of an elderly woman, at least with a basic x-ray, is just basic good care.

Now, if he wanted to do bone marrow studies, etc or a biopsy, without doing an x-ray or MRI first, I'd agree that he's "fishing for dollars".

And I don't blame your grandmother a bit for saying "nope, not doing any invasive testing"... but if she had no interest in treating anything even if it WERE cancer, why did she see the doctor for it in the first place?

Summerthyme

[naegling62]

Diabetic medications? I brought up that concern with my endocrinologist. He said PC is up in the general population and some diabetic drugs double your PC chances.