On the pulse


Cancerkin’s News…


Spiritual healing at Cancerkin…

We are pleased to announce that, beginning next month, Cancerkin will be offering a six week trial of one-to-one spiritual healing sessions. Spiritual Healing is a natural energy therapy. It complements conventional medicine by treating the person – mind, body and spirit. Spiritual Healers act as a conduit for healing energy, which relaxes the body, releases tensions, and stimulates self-healing. The benefits of healing can be felt on many levels, not just physical, and the effects can be profound.

Sessions will be individual 45 minute appointments from 2pm until 5pm every Wednesday for six weeks from 16th February 2011. If you are interested in booking an appointment, please contact Habeeb at h.ahmed@cancerkin.org.uk or 0207 830 2323.


Comedy with a cause…

This February 21st, the Jewish Community Centre for London will be holding a charity comedy evening at London’s famous Comedy Store in association with Cancerkin. Ivor Baddiel and Tracy-Ann Oberman will host the ‘Comedy with a Cause’ evening and will be introducing some of the UK’s leading stand-up comedians including Comedy Store regulars Josh Howie, Bennett Arron, Adam Bloom and Mark Maier as well as the hilarious Helen Lederer.

There will be a raffle on the night, as well as a display and auction of spectacular customised bras by a host of celebrities. More than 40 big names have decorated plain white bras donated by Triumph for the online charity auction. Contributors to the auction include Kelly Brook, Rachel Stevens and Isla Fisher to name but a few. Their creations will be auctioned online from February 1 to 27 at www.jccbigbraauction.org.uk.

All proceeds from the comedy evening and the auction will be split between Cancerkin and the JCC for London. If you would like to know more about the event or would like to reserve tickets, please click here.


In the news…


Can cancer be normal?

Last weekend The Guardian published a extract taken from a forthcoming book ‘The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer’ written by cancer physician and researcher Siddartha Murkerjee. Interestingly written from a doctor’s perspective, the extract tells the story of Carla Reed, a woman who overcomes a rare and particularly aggressive form of leukaemia. Murkerjee’s depiction of Carla’s story is interspersed with analysis of the causes, characteristics and treatment of cancer, which lead him to raising questions about how ‘normal’ the disease is.

As he describes in the course of the extract, cancer cells seem to use normal cell process to generate, grow and survive – they are, he states, ‘more perfect versions of ourselves.’ When distorted by cancer, the ability of a normal human cell to divide, reproduce and repair allows a cancer cell to do the same - only at a much faster rate. This uncontrollable cancer cell growth is unleashed by genes that are already present in normal cells and that are distorted by carcinogens or viruses. Some scientists have also suggested that cancer cells use the normal ‘immortal regeneration’ process of the body’s stem cells to multiply infinitely. In this way, Murkerjee suggests that, as ‘Cancer is inherently stitched into our genetic being’, it seems to be more normal than unnatural.

Murkerjee also suggests that cancer has become more ‘normal’ because we are living longer than ever before. While certain cancers such as lung, liver, or cervical cancer have identifiable causes and therefore clear preventative steps to reduce risk, the risk of developing others, like prostate or breast cancer, seems for the most part reliant on age. As cells age, more mistakes are made as genes are copied, leading to mutant genes triggering cancer growth. The general rise in life expectancy in the developed world has been paralleled by a rising incidences of cancer. In the US for example, one in two men and one in three women will have cancer during their lives. Murkerjee therefore questions how, in such a society, cancer can be thought of as abnormal.

In the past, after treatment by surgery, radiation and chemotherapy cancer was thought of as having only one of two outcomes – being cured or being incurable. As treatment has changed and attitudes have developed, binary outcomes seem no longer to apply. Murkerjee takes the example of a young woman with breast cancer who will undergo a mastectomy, then chemo and radiation over several months followed by further drugs and treatments. She might receive anti-oestrogen therapy over a number of years, mammography for decades after and genetic testing for her family, meaning her therapy could span 5 or 10 years, possibly more. He suggests that, over this length of time, ‘cancer will become the new “normal”’ in a person’s life.

To read more of this fascinating extract, please click here.

Laura Smith 21st January 2011