Word: colonizers
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...rest of us--mired in inhibitions that date back to our toilet training--don't even want to think about it. Potty talk is for two-year-olds, not grownups. The idea of a full-scale colon exam (You're going to stick that thing where?) scares most Americans away from the very screening test that could save their life. Is it any wonder that 99% of Americans, when asked to name a potentially fatal disease, don't think of colorectal cancer (according to a survey released last week on Capitol Hill...
That sort of reticence proved deadly for the late Charles Schulz, beloved creator of Peanuts, who resisted being tested despite the fact that his mother, two uncles and an aunt died of colon cancer. By the time physicians discovered his tumor last fall, it had spread to his stomach lining, and there was little they could...
Even when our own doctor tells us to get our colon checked, we don't always listen. A year and a half ago, Florence Seguin, 73, of Williamsburg, Va., shrugged off her physician's recommendation that she undergo a colonoscopy, a procedure in which a doctor inserts a flexible lighted tube into the colon to look for abnormal growths. A former nun and the adoptive mother of a 13-year-old boy, Seguin knew that one of her brothers had died of colon cancer, but it wasn't until she saw an article about Couric and Monahan that she stopped...
...serious about protecting yourself and your loved ones against colorectal cancer, it will help to know something about the disease. Nearly all colon cancers start as polyps, tiny grapelike projections that sprout on the inside of the large intestine. Most of the time these growths are benign, but occasionally a collection of cells--through a series of genetic mishaps--will get bigger and bigger until it turns into a tumor. About 25% of these malignant growths are triggered by a genetic predisposition that has been present since birth. The rest of the time, normal genes become damaged with...
Researchers have identified the genes responsible for at least two types of hereditary colon cancer--dubbed FAP and HNPCC --that trigger malignant growths in folks in their 30s and 40s. But it can be tough to tell who has the genes, since they are often camouflaged by normal ones. Last month Dr. Bert Vogelstein and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Md., reported in the journal Nature that they have figured out how to unmask the defective genes. Meanwhile, researchers at Exact Laboratories in Maynard, Mass., have developed a simple stool test that will alert your doctor...