In September 2024 we were at a dinner with some friends of ours and learned the husband was having what the doctor thought was Gall Bladder issues.  Soon after he had a CT scan and there were spots on his pancreas, liver and lungs, Stage 4 cancer.  Seven weeks later he passed away.  No time to do chemo or treat the cancer.  It happened so fast at the end he was only hoping his family and friends could get there in time to see him.  He had always been a strong man and rarely sick, this was overwhelming to the family. 

I also experienced cancer.  In 2020 I was diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma lung cancer right in the middle of covid.  Since my cancer was in stage 1, I only had the lower right lob removed and did not need chemotherapy.  After surgery I was in a room next to a covid patient, and you could hear the person coughing and coughing.  So, not only was I dealing with the results of lung surgery I was concerned about acquiring covid.  Thankfully I did not get covid, but the recovery was painful.

Cancer is one of those diseases that is devastating.  The death of an individual takes that person’s life and leaves a hole in a family.  And even if the cancer is stage 1 and treatable, it changes the way you think.  You always wonder if the pain you have, is cancer, or whether the next CT scan will show the cancer has returned.

Cancer is an insidious process where normal body cells begin to multiply unusually through a variety of channels.  These cells can invade surrounding tissue and spread throughout the body.  There is a wide scope of things that alter a cell’s genetic code and trigger cells to multiply.   They can be from chemical (e.g. asbestos) to biological (e.g. genetics), in my case the trigger is unknown.  If left unchecked they can spread to other organs interfering with the normal body processes. Eventually organs decline with the death of tissues and in the end the death of the individual, as with my friend.

So why does cancer exist?  The world we live in is full of terrible things.  Besides cancer there are a raft of other diseases that cause pain and death.  Evolutionary theory would agree with this process of death. Those organisms with less favorable traits do not survive, while those with the most adaptable mutations do.  Those traits get passed on to the next generation and accumulate over time to make a more advanced organism. 

It takes a substantial number of beneficial mutations to get passed along to make any progression to a new species.  However, all individual point mutations “reduce the genetic information and not to increase it” ¹ and are not beneficial in forming a new organism.  Most mutations are harmful, causing suffering and death.  If no trait was passed along to future generations, how did we get to where we are?  And it could not have helped my friend that died of cancer, or even benefited him or I?

See Part 2 for the ultimate truth about cancer.

1. L. Spetner, Not by Chance (New York: Judaica Press, 1997), p. 138., “All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not to increase it.”