Word: cancerous
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...rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted...
...your spouse were dying of cancer, would you want to know? For the vast majority of people, the answer is a resounding yes. But a new Swedish study suggests that many people are never given that information...
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm surveyed nearly 700 Swedish men who lost their wives to breast, ovarian or colon cancer in 2000 or 2001. More than 40% of widowers surveyed said they were either never told their spouse's cancer was incurable, or weren't told until just before her death. About 85% of participants said they, or the next of kin, should be told immediately when a spouse's cancer is incurable, a proportion that includes 71% of the men who did not recall being told this information about their own wives. "Sweden is not unique...
...Journal of Clinical Oncology, suggest doctors need to do a better job at communicating the exact nature of an illness. Physicians are, after all, largely responsible for informing families when their loved one is facing a fatal disease - of those widowers who were told that their wife's cancer was incurable, 79% received the news from the doctor. Still, patients and families do control at least some of the information flow, Dahlstrand says. "Sometimes a spouse can block out what the doctor is trying to tell them," she says. "So, the doctor must be as straightforward and unambiguous as possible...
...When it comes to cancer], we calculate that the risk for lung cancer probably returns to that of a nonsmoker somewhere between 10 and 15 years after smoking cessation. (We have less data on the [other smoking-related cancers].) But the risk that people have for smoking-related diseases is directly related to the total number of cigarettes they've smoked in their life. We measure that with something we call "pack-years": that's the average number of packs per day multiplied by the number of years they've smoked. The greater the pack-years, the greater the risk...