Also, I think it goes without saying that cancer is indeed a very complicated disease. It's so complicated that you can have a different set of mutated genes in another person that leads to the same cancer. Different roads leading to the same destination.

On a sad note, my friend's father passed away from mesothelioma of the lungs (a form of lung cancer typically caused by asbestos exposure). They think it's because he did industrial work for a long time. The very sad thing about this case is his wife also developed mesothelioma shortly thereafter. The doctors were highly perplexed, and no one really knows how that could of happened. The only conclusion that makes some amount of sense is she used to wash all of his work clothes. They think she may have been breathing in some asbestos fibers this way. Who knows.

MSG - In spite of the last paragraph you copied from their text, isn't it curious that the Centers for Disease Control this year is recommending that women no longer completely depend on the PAP smear for cervical cancer, (which finds dysplasia, when the cell is on its way to going south) but recommends for the Digene HPV test in addition to PAP during exams for those women that have an ambiguous or positive PAP. So why is this so? More data points.

Routine testing for high grade HPV will show whether a woman has a PERSISTENT infection, one that your immune system is not clearing, and that infection is the mandatory precursor for the development of cervical cancer. Looking at any assay, only traps that one moment in time. Interesting, and in some cases highly important, but trap two sequential moments in time and you see a trend, which is a line pointing to an event. Add additional data points like person has a histology result that is suspect and also has HPV... This is a person that is in a different group than everyone else, and needs one of three possible resolutions that they have recommended. While very useful, the PAP test isn't known for its high sensitivity nor specificity.

Least anyone take MSG's opinion about recurrence to the point of worry, it would seem that at least at the 5 year mark there is actually a survival advantage and not a propensity for recurrence in individuals with HPV16+ primaries. I am at the 10 year timeline, and an recurrence free. There is no data to support a recurrence tendency for people with HPV16 as the original primary cause. But until large numbers of people reach 10, 15, 20 years we will not know for sure. As to carcinogenesis from other sources like tobacco, we already have the dismal recurrence data.

No, I don't think that's so. The argument against that is HPV DNA testing picks up any HPV-residential, episomal, integrated. It's only the integrated forms that lead to high grade cervical dysplasia, and eventually cervical cancer. Infact, ALTS does not recommend using the HPV DNA digene test in LSIL cases, because the vast majority will test positive. Why cause needless worry and expenses? There is another test that is able to pick up integrated HPV in the form of E6 and E7 proteins. That is a much better indicator of potential cancer than the digene test.

Routine testing is another way, true, but that may go on for several years to determine persistence and integration. It would be better just to test for the oncogenic proteins.

When that becomes an affordable alternative test, maybe they will, it is not today.... perhaps you should write to the CDC. Bottom line, is we still test for may things which are vague precursor events and they have helped greatly, if not an absolute test for something. Like the PSA test for Prostate specific antigen. Remember that detection of early stage disease is the goal, not finite determination of every individual that will definitively get it. We have to sift out of a population of 300 million people those most at risk, so that they can end up in accelerated monitoring programs for the earliest detection of actual disease events, when survival is the greatest. Trying to test that many people with a finite, expensive test is never going to be in the game.

Since we have diverged significantly in to areas outside of oral cancer thisis the ALTS programs definition for those that wish to know.
ALTS was a clinical trial to find the best way to help women and their doctors decide what to do about the mildly abnormal and very common Pap test results known as ASCUS and LSIL. About three million women in the United States are diagnosed with ASCUS and LSIL each year. Organized and funded by the National Cancer Institute, ALTS included more than 5,000 women. It began in November 1996 and concluded at the end of 2000. Data analysis of the trial's findings is ongoing.

ASCUS stands for atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance and LSIL for low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions. Most of these mild abnormalities will go away without treatment, but some may signal a precancerous condition or, rarely, cancer, ALTS looked at three ways to manage these abnormalities:
immediate colposcopy (magnified viewing and testing of the cervix)
repeat Pap tests
testing for human papillomavirus (HPV), an infection linked to cervical cancer

OCF is sponsoring salivary diagnostic work with Wong at UCLA. That test is a sieving process. It looks for proteins and RNA factors that we know to be associated with the development of oral cancer. (and many other diseases as well.) The value of the saliva test is that it is a cheap mass screening process to sieve out of a huge population a smaller group to watch. The issue has always been about identifying those at risk, not those with the actual disease already. Now we know who to be paying attention to, and we are not spending money and time (neither of which we have in our broken medical system) to do expensive, labor intensive, tests on large numbers of people. In salivary diagnostics anyone can collect your spit (non doctor) and it can be read by a computer chip programed to look for the markers) no pathologist, and quickly and cheaply say you are in a risk group. This is what is needed today. Affordable, quick, and sorting out those most at risk so that the more expensive processes and interventions may be applied to them.

The real world argument against the DNA testing that you are referring to, is that it disregards the realities of pubic health. It is expensive, it is time consuming, and it requires very highly trained, knowledgeable professionals to conduct it and interpret the findings. We can't even do much simpler and less expensive things in public health that would save lives.

Salivary diagnostics will be a commercial reality for oral cancer in less than 24 months, for other diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's, and pancreatic cancer in years quickly following. Imagine, a test that would allow pancreatic cancer to no longer be a less than one year death sentence, from the saliva in your mouth, and early detection.

Wow, 24 months away? That's really cool.

Brian & MSG,

All I have to say is WOW and thank you for explaining "Cancer".

So, in really simple language, cancer acts like a parasite creating it's own little atmosphere where it can prosper until it kills it's host. I never understood cancer and how we're basically in trouble the minute our body decides to accept the cancer and feed it with new blood vessels.

If blood flow to cancer cells was blocked would the cancer die? Is that what chemo and radiation does?

I apologize for starting a thread breaking away from OC...But, this is really helping me understand my cancer for the first time since I was dx'ed.

I got my answer reading another post in another thread...thank you though.

It is amazing what we know about how the HPV virus does it's thing yet we really can't stop it without a lot of collateral damage. When I first read how HPV attacked my mouth I was shocked to find out the level of known detail and how smart the virus is at surviving. As Brain said our cells have like 2 guards. Guard #1 makes sure the cell has accumulated enough "good stuff" to reproduce another good cell and Guard #2 must get the OK from Guard #1 before he determines that he can give the final OK to reproduce. Now HPV comes along and goes to Guard #1 and says forget your rules and listen to me...I say it's Ok to tell Guard #2 that you are ready to go and then the virus goes to Guard #2 and says regardless of what you think, it's OK to signal reproduction so the cell reproduces without being ready or good enough to do so.

Now that's the children's version.

Ray,

There was some pioneering work done along those lines: starving the tumor by cutting off the blood flow. The scientific name for this process is called anti-angiogenesis, or, the blocking of new blood vessel creation. The doctor who pioneered this theory work won a Nobel Prize, I believe. The sad thing is, the idea never really worked well in clinical practice.

There is a new idea that is taking root in the scientific community regarding the treatment of cancer. Instead of finding a "cure", which most believe will not happen in our lifetimes, they should focus on finding cancer in the early stages where it's most treatable. There is some interesting work, as Brian mentioned earlier, that is going on with that.