Something different to think about...

Our class has done a great job at delving into the biology of cancer, whether it's understanding how it works at a cellular level, studying the risks of its therapies, or critiquing the latest claim that something either cures or causes cancer. This is a biology class, afterall, and most of us intend to be scientists, doctors, and researchers, so that is certainly an important angle of the disease to study. But I was scouring the internet today to find something interesting to write about for my last blog post and, in the process, came across a page on the NY Times website entitled "Picture Your Life After Cancer". Quite literally, the page was just that: a montage of photos posted by people who've been affected by cancer in some manner. I know I personally get wrapped up in the science of cancer and get excited to talk about what is really going on in someone's body, but I don't think if you were to ask an affected patient what cancer meant to them, they would tell you about tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes; when I talk to my own mother, who is a cancer survivor, I don't do it in the terminology of kinases or mutagens. I suggest looking at the montage or trying to find some other personal stories of cancer on the internet; we need to be more careful to remember that cancer more importantly affects people than it does cells.