Sunday, August 16, 2009

Precancers: 1

After a long stretch of blog inactivity, I am starting to post again. I apologize for the absence, but I've been deeply absorbed writing several books. Now that the writing phase is finished, I hope to use the blog to post short essays on topics covered in those books.

Readers of this blog are familiar with my interest in precancers. Precancer: The Beginning and the End of Cancer, was just published (August 11, 2009) by Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Inc., and is now available at Amazon. It was written with the help of Dr. G. William Moore. Here's the publisher's blurb:

"Nearly every type of cancer passes through a precancer phase, during which it cannot metastasize or invade other tissues. While medicine is not always successful in treating or curing advanced stages of cancers, recent advances in our understanding of carcinogenesis have helped us to develop strategies to prevent, diagnose, and treat many cancers at the precancer stage. Research in this field is escalating rapidly as the evidence increasingly shows that the number of annual cancer deaths could be drastically reduced through the effective treatment and cure of precancer lesions. This book begins by explaining why it has been so difficult to cure cancers, followed by a review of precancer biology, with descriptions of the most common precancer lesions. The final chapters provide practical socio-political and medical goals for precancer treatment, including discussions of the economics and politics of treating precancers."

I've been interested in the precancers for over thirty-six years, and I think it's a shame that the precancers have not gotten more attention from cancer researchers and from the public. My impression is that many cancer researchers fail to distinguish between "precancers" and "early cancers". Precancers are very different from early cancers. One of the most important properties of precancers is their tendency to regress [spontaneously, or with simple treatments]. The book clarifies the biological properties that distinguish precancers from other early [and late] cancers, and describes how we can stop cancers from developing by treating precancers.

More on precancers in next post.

Jules Berman

related words: precancers, preneoplastic lesions, preneoplasia, ien, intra-epithelial neoplasia, intraepithelial neoplasia, intra-epithelial neoplasm, intraepithelial neoplasm, in situ carcinoma, carcinoma in situ, cis, dcis, din, pin, panin, cin, dysplasia, adenoma, preneoplastic, pre-cancer, pre-cancerous, precancerous
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