Infectious cancers

Patient's question " Doctor, please wait before rushing off. I have a question for you. Do I have cancer? Please be direct and honest with me, and explain to me the truth about what you know about cancer in a manner that I, as a layman, will be able to understand what you tell me. Most importantly, what is cancer, and what causes cancer? If I have cancer, how long will I live, and will I have just a little or significant pain? And lastly, is there any chance of a cure " ? Doctor's answer " I don't know! No one knows the answers to your questions with absolute certainty. You must now excuse me I have other patients to see. " Discussion Cancer is a general term frequently used to describe a variety of malignant altercations, most of which manifest invasive-ness and metastasize to multiple sites, resulting in progressive illness and death [1]. For centuries, the causes of a variety of malignant conditions and cancer were unknown; some cases even were considered mythical, such as " the black plague, " which was attributed at one time to an ethnic group, i.e., the Jews. This mythical concept, for example, resulted in the extermination of an enormous number of Jews. Only decades later did this mythical misconception prove false, and not surprisingly , found to be caused by infectious gram negative bacteria , Yersinia pestis, by Selman Waksman [2] and his protégé Albert Schatz, in the 1940s and early 1950s. The black plague was easily and quickly controlled and minimized by the use of streptomycin, a gray secreted substance from an actino-myces, Actinomyces griseus (gray). Interestingly, my first and only experience with the black plague was at the young age of 27 in March 1969 while in the United States Navy, 3rd Medical Battalion of the 3 rd Marine Division, where I treated an epidemic of plague in the village of Pho Hoi, Viet Nam. I documented 38 men, women and children with classic signs and symptoms of plague including prominent buboes, which were treated and resolved with a combination of streptomy-cin and tetracycline. It was hard for me to believe that the life-saving drug streptomycin had been available for only 25 years. Complete clearing of the plague was ensured in days after treatment was instituted. Not surprisingly, the only ones that were exterminated then were the carrier rodents. Although …