Linda

While the question of where cancer comes from continues to bedevil us, my English major background strongly suggests your psychology professor's quote as originating from Robert Burns[Scottish national poet (1759 - 1796)] Poem "To a Louse" - verse 8
[quote]O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
(O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.)
[/quote]
While the word gazer does not appear in the quote, in a Psychology and English course, the teacher discussed James Joyce incorporation of Burn's concept into Finnegan's Wake based on Joyce's study of Freud's case history of the Wolf Man (From the History of an Infantile Neurosis). Gaze and Gazer have been traditionally used in translating that Freudian work into English. I'd dig up the exact quote but it's been 43 years since that college class and I seem to have misplaced my notes.
Charm

Brian, I agree with your scientific approach and have great respect for the principles of the forum. My problem is that I have never had a good scientific explanation of the connection between lichen planus and SCC. Like Linda I had the allergy patch test performed in a large hospital by a dermatologist and was told that the smoking gun was amalgam.

It has been suggested to me by an oral medicine specialist that my so-called lichen planus might not have been something else - something potentially cancerous. The lack of any sort of definitive explanation means that half formed ideas float around in my mind.

I know that cancer is complex and not cut and dried and you are right to keep a tight lid on conspiracy theories and unproven alternative remedies. I'm usually a fully fledged sceptic but when your life is on the line and amalgam and lichen planus are linked in some people and LP and SCC in a small percentage too, it is not totally irrational to see the three things as linked. In layman's terms anyway.

The work you do is absolutely fantastic and much appreciated.

Maureen J

Rose -Alpaca - I'm not sure that in anything to do with cancer that it is ever 100% cut and dried. Even smoking and HPV have individually unique ways of impacting any one person. George Burns smoked cigars until he was almost 100 and he never got lung or oral cancers.... good genes and the accompanying robust immune system that they can bring. Another kid starts doing smokeless chew at 12 and is dead at 19 (his story is in the people section of the main site).

When you look at large populations, there are always individuals who have a reaction that no on else has. The polio vaccine saved millions of lives, but people do not remember that it destroyed a few too. Some genetic anomaly that no one could even describe scientifically at the time caused a negative in a miniscule portion of people. So the bottom line is ANYTHING is possible in the world of genetics and proteomics. The question is more - has it been seen enough to call it a trend line, a risk factor, or even to notice it? And if so, do we have the technology to identify it repeatedly, and can we interrupt that sequence of events on a lifestyle level or a cellular level?

What OCF hopes is that the researchers we support and work with as our advisors will continue to biopsy every patient diagnosed at their institutions. That they will continue to look at commonalities, in demographics, in diet, in occupational hazards, and more. But where we will find the most usable commonalities will be in genetic make up. Those commonalities will lead to targeted treatment for patients with genetic similarities that are known to work (extend survival or eradicate the disease) with the minimum of collateral morbidity and impact on quality of life.

Most of us will never see the results of the ongoing work. But hopefully the remenents of our biological battles will continue to yield data that helps those behind us. It isn't as satisfying as saying I had HPV, or my lifestyle choices like tobacco use got me here, but it is something.

An interesting discussion related to some of this

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3254