Rayna, Graham, Steve, and Arthur - I'm glad you found my thread interesting- and realise that others learn from such posts without necessarily contributing
Imagine ( Stewart ) - thanks for sharing your experiences with us. You - and other members - will know that I don't judge people's lifestyles, but in your case I agree that smoking probably had nothing to do with causing your cancer.
A few other comments :
* Chemotherapy which Stewart described - destruction of cancer cells with drugs - also damages other fast dividing cells ( which is why hair falls out, blood cells don't form properly, and people feel sick ). In the future, more drugs will be discovered which will target the mutated genes in cancer cells and leave all other ( normal ) cells alone. Some already exist - for leukaemia, breast cancer, and melanoma. This is because we now know so much about human genes - both normal and cancerous. There are too many different types of cancer to talk about complete cure - but there are reasons to be cheerful
* You might think that if people form antibodies to cancer cells ( the basis for the lung cancer test ), their own immune defenses could be exploited to treat cancer. That has proved very hard to do, despite much work - cancers suppress the immune system. But at last the immune response is being put to some use by this early diagnosis test
* Although cancers are relatively commoner now (an age effect ), people are living longer with many of them. The answer for the cancers with little progress ( lung, stomach, pancreas, brain ) is earlier diagnosis. Screening already works for others ( breast, bowel, and cervix ).
