Wednesday I got my bladder scoped and there were no tumors. What a relief to put it mildly.I am a new person as a result. Is it just me or is this general? The interplay between mind and cancer is something I have studied for a long time. I also did computer modeling in cancer research. So it went from the very modern to the nitty-gritty science.
I'm a hard one to classify as a scientist. I did my PhD in Physiology at Chicago and I started in CNS neurophysiology and ended up writing a thesis on a laboratory model of the cell membrane. So even then it went from one end to the other.
Science is anything but monolithic and the internal "politics" are rather interesting in a sick sort of way. Read on below and I'll share some thoughts with you.
Jim Coffman and I just finished a paper that is a follow up to our book. We are deep into how the human mind works as a part of a larger system we call "society" This has much to do with how we relate to cancer. Here's the abstract of the paper:
Abstract
In our book Global Insanity we argued that the existential predicament faced by humanity is a predictable consequence of Western Enlightenment thinking and the resulting world model, whose ascendance with the Industrial Revolution entrained development of the global consumer Economy that is destroying the biosphere. This situation extends from a dominant mindset based on the philosophy of reductionism. The problem was recognized and characterized by Robert M. Hutchins. In 1985, Hutchins ideas were discussed by Robert Rosen in Chapter 1 of Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical & Methodological Foundations. Building on Hutchins’ ideas, Rosen laid the foundation for an entire new, non-reductionist paradigm, which he called “complexity theory”. This new paradigm is what we are further developing here. One has to recognize that a paradigm shift is needed to overcome the entrenched mindset and world model that reductionism has created.
Here we explore the myriad interconnected ways—psychological, social, cultural, political, and technological—that the Western world model and consumer economy works as a complex system to thwart, neutralize, or co-opt for its own ends any effort to bring about the kind of radical change that is needed to avert global ecological catastrophe and societal collapse. This resistance to change stems from the need, inherent in the Western model, to continually grow the consumer economy. The media’s continued portrayal of consumptive economic growth as a good thing, the widely held belief that the Economy is paramount, and current political and technological trends all manifest the system’s active resistance to change. From the perspective of the mature economic system, any work that does not serve to grow the Economy is counterproductive, and viewed as unnecessary, a luxury, or subversive. The potential for real change (i.e. toward creation of a better system) is thus inversely related to the viability of the Economy, which will eventually decline as the system develops into senescence. To the extent that the fragile metastability of senescence affords opportunity for radical change, economic decline can be viewed as a hopeful sign. But taking maximum advantage of that opportunity will be extraordinarily difficult, as it will require widespread recognition of the problem, major voluntary sacrifice by the relatively large numbers of people who still benefit from the system (including what remains of the ‘middle class’), and concerted 'grassroots' efforts. It can be expected that the system will resist those efforts until the end, becoming increasingly reliant on media-enabled distraction and divisive politics, as well as violent coercion, to maintain itself. Investment in education and science is widely touted as necessary for improving our situation, but this is misguided as long as the educational system and scientific enterprise continue to work in collusion with the larger system, as they currently do. Until the reductionist mindset and world model that drives the system is effectively challenged, there can be little hope for the kind of change needed to avert the catastrophic collapse of civilization.
I have written about problems with cancer research here before and if you have read the abstract above you see the broader perspective that those thoughts fit into. It is hard to deal with a paradigm shift in blogs but I keep trying.
I am a fan Of George Lakoff and his cognitive linguistics. In our book we review a number of other recent authors who bring us forward in our understanding of this mind we are using. Nothing could be more circular than using our mind to study itself.
I also use this linguistic/mind working in trying to communicate new ideas for we are imprisoned by language and the mental frames Lakoff describes. "Science" is a political world in many ways. In the broad spectrum of National politics it has become a strong threat to some who want us to blindly accept their belief systems. It has also become a threat to the oligarchs who control our Nation and own the industries that are killing us. They are agents of cancer in a very real way. The latest manifestation of how sick that situation has become is the "partnership" between breast cancer awareness and fracking complete with pink drill bits!
So we have a division of our society about science and a fundamental division within science and they both relate to cancer in very profound ways. We know a lot about the mechanistic workings of cancer and fix it like we fix our cars. In my 54 years as a scientist I have watched us "discover" the cause of cancer at least 21 times (I then stopped counting). In fact we do not know what causes cancer in any mechanistic way. We can associate things with the likelihood that cancer will arise but this is tricky since people who are exposed to any carcinogen do not all respond in the same way. It seems very clear that a lot of the by products of our way of life are likely agents.
That brings us to the role of mind in all this. We are willing to live in a way that is destroying us including the incidence of cancer. There is a level of mind workings that comes to play after the fact. We are all aware that positive thinking, being loved and cared about, etc. all seem to help some people recover.
We also are aware that having cancer profoundly changes one's image of oneself. Society can add to this because it carries a stigma. My own recent experience was very real for me. When the doc said "no tumors" as he scoped me I was transformed in my own mind. I had imagined that moment so many times but this was the first that I had the pleasure of experiencing it.
So where does all this lead? For one thing the mental aspect of cancer is part of a whole reality in any individual as well as part of the way society deals with the issues. We can not divorce ourselves from the political realities of what goes on in science and the world that attacks science and still deal with our own situation effectively. This is a tough idea for when one is stricken one needs all the resources one can muster. The time to prepare the mind for what it will be called upon to handle is before the diagnosis. That preparation can not occur in a box called "dealing with cancer" since there is no such box in a real world where everything is connected.
We know a bit about how stress weakens our defenses to many forms of disease. What we don't know is how to be aware of the stress we encounter. The ugly circularity is that during stress we are less able to evaluate our state. The body gets stressed by many avenues. The mind is certainly a major one. The insults the poisons we have all around us compounds this.
It seems that it should be obvious how we need to deal with the threat of cancer. Reduce all forms of stress and live in a healthy way. That is so much easier said than done in a sick oligarchy. One's diet is not open to choice but limited by the way food is grown and distributed. One's water supply is open to all kinds of profit seeking poisoners. Finally, one's economic class is a huge factor in what options one has, if any.
So after a lifetime of dealing with these questions I have to feel lucky that I was tumor free Wednesday because I have no clue why the tumors appeared in the first place and now why they are gone. I do know that I feel like I've been released from some sort of prison. The scary part is that my own mind had a huge part in creating that prison.
Monday Night Cancer Club is a Daily Kos group focused on dealing with cancer, primarily for cancer survivors and caregivers, though clinicians, researchers, and others with a special interest are also welcome. Volunteer diarists post Monday evenings between 7:30-8:30 PM ET on topics related to living with cancer, which is very broadly defined to include physical, spiritual, emotional and cognitive aspects. Mindful of the controversies endemic to cancer prevention and treatment, we ask that both diarists and commenters keep an open mind regarding strategies for surviving cancer, whether based in traditional, Eastern, Western, allopathic or other medical practices. This is a club no one wants to join, in truth, and compassion will help us make it through the challenge together.