In the seventies, President Nixon declared an ambitious goal and called it the “War on Cancer. However, a few decades later, we have to admit that we fell short as cancer rates still haven’t gone done.

When I asked my parents about how many people they knew with cancer when they were still children, they told me, maybe one or two. I am now 37 years old and I have to conclude that the situation has changed dramatically.

My point is: every 7th or 8th women today in the United States will get breast-cancer this year. Go back in time and you will realize it wasn’t like that 20, 40, 60, 80 years ago.

Nowadays, almost everybody knows someone with cancer. And very likely you will find someone within your own family.

In March of 2009 my wife Ann was diagnosed with breast cancer. My mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer only a few months later. And after I encountered blood in my urine, a CT-Scan result came back with another cancer diagnosis for our family. A larger tumor was found in my left kidney.

I am about to have surgery during which my kidney will be removed entirely. It’s insane. Cancer is everywhere. It’s not that remote mysterious disease anymore that was likely to spare you.

The page has turned. Cancer is growing, even though billions of $$ where poured into science and research to find the magic bullet, after Nixon proudly declared to battle it and to declare victory in record time. And when I speak of President Nixon, I certainly don’t mean to point my finger at the USA – the situation is the same everywhere in the Western World.

Or do I just imagine all that? Is my wife’s cancer, my mother’s cancer and my own cancer just a coincidence or is there more to the picture. And what about the other ten people I know who also all got diagnosed in 2009.

But that’s just my opinion, and I know that a lot of people disagree with my standpoint. They argue with new data and studies which supposedly show a significant reduction in new breast cancer diagnoses and mortality rates.

I’m not a math-wizard. But since I am in a related profession, I do know how to read statistics, clinical studies and numbers in general. And therefore, I also know how easy it is to present the exact same numbers and data in many different ways. It’s like looking at the glass half full versus half empty.

There is no doubt that improvements were made over the years in the ‘War on Cancer’. However, I believe everybody would agree that we are far away from victory. There is still a lot more to do until the final battle is one.

I was diagnosed with Kidney Cancer and seven months later after my wife Ann was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in March of 2009. I created our Breast Cancer Homepage with the intention to share information about breast cancer and our story with you and to provide independent quality breast cancer and treatment information to you.

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