P. A. Chacko
10 million cancer-related deaths globally in one year! Not a joke! That was in 2020. Every year more numbers are added.
We are told that cancer is becoming a significant health challenge in India. There are over 1.5 million new cases a year in the country. Breast cancer among women and oral cancer among men take the cake!.
Medical literature tells us that cancer has many causes.
*Genetic changes causing in uncontrolled cell growth and tumour formation.
*DNA Damage and gnomic instability.
*Inherited genetic mutations.
*Above all, environmental causes, meaning “everything that is outside the body interacting with humans.”
Lifestyle related cancer is on the rampage. Some call it “behaviour exposures.”
Sitting at a grocery shop yesterday, I watched a young budding village shop keeper buying bundles of cigarettes and beedies. Like a self-styled consultant, I ventured to offer my free medical service. ‘Hello my brother,” I said, ” beedies and cigarettes, like pan and gutka, are dangerous cancer-causing agents. Please do not kill people”.
He silently listened, but the best part was the appendix provided by the grocery shop owner. He said: “Oh, these items are for labourers. This is the way they kill themselves.” I restrained myself from asking the wholesale dealer, “So you want to be a merchant of death and this man’s agent? “
I looked at the Flake cigarette box. The red letter warning on the box said: “Beware, cigarette causes death by cancer.”
The government allows factory owners to produce cigarettes with a caution: “Produce and market cancer-causing cigarettes or other substances, but just mark ‘dangerous’. We need your tax.”
Our judges are fully conversant with the danger of this marketing strategy. Why can’t they take a suo motu action? Perhaps they too ask: Who will bell the cat?
There is little hope in our high decibel-mouthing legislators who are worried about getting subsidized canteen food
and political survival strategies.
That is the tragedy. The government itself is the super death merchant. For amassing taxes, it indulges in illegal and criminal acts. Who will arrest the criminals? Many others are agents of death.
Medical researchers educate us on the folowing general types of cancer:
*Carcinomas: They originate in the skin or in tissues that border or cover internal organs.
*Sarcoma: It develops in connective tissues, including bone, cartilage, fat, muscle, and blood vessels.
*Leukemia: It begins in areas that create blood cells, such as bone marrow.
*Lymphoma and myeloma: They arise in immune system cells.
*Brain and spinal cord cancer: They are known as central nervous system malignancies; these begin in the cells of the brain and spinal cord.
We know that cancer lurks at every curb and corner. Your school has small stationery shops beside your gate. See what your students are made to buy. Cancer-causing or nerve- stimulating drugs hidden in lollipops and sweets.
You are scared to death to hear that the eggs you buy may be plastic or chemically produced eggs. Foor products are adulterated. Poultry chicken meat has its own hidden carcinoma -causing treasures. Soft drinks have frightening chemical compositions. Et cetera, et cetera!
Yet, no food inspectors bother. I see a few of them circling around sweet shops like bumblebees or grocery shops and take off with their monthly share.
Let us not throw caution to the winds. Our life style needs to be sorted out. Our environmental pollution needs to be attended to. Our legislators need to be questioned. Our polluting factories, throwing their vomit into our canals and rivers, need a relook. Our clinics and hospitals need to pay attention to the way they use syringes or inject drugs into people. The sellers of adulterated food need to be taken to task. And so on.
Cancer waylays people in many ways. Let no human being become a merchant or an agent of death.