Bio week 8

In many ways our understanding of cancer is very sophisticated - we know exactly what transcriptions factors are malfunctioning and how cancer cells differ from normal cells. However, our understanding also is very basic in many ways. We can't predict who will get cancer even with people who are exposed to the same carcinogenic substances or have the same family history. Even though in America we are detecting cancer earlier and more frequently, it hasn't changed the mortality rates. In a lot of ways, we have a long way to go in understanding why certain people get cancer and how to treat the cancer. Many times people go into remission, but years later the cancer comes back. We can therefore make the assumption that our doctors are not able to understand or cure the deep underlying causes of cancer. Like with every other disease, TCM looks at the whole person and does not reduce the disease down to the cellular level. It takes into account the emotions of the person, something western medicine wouldn't even really consider. It also takes into account that there can be as many different underlying causes as there are people. Many times, TCM's role is that of support with cancer patients. The treatments we do have in western medicine can be very brutal - either cutting the cancer out or subjecting the body the radiation or chemotherapy. TCM can help mitigate the side effects that these treatments cause.

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