Category: Cancer

Did Minnie Riperton die needlessly of breast cancer? Many black women do It’s been more than 30 years since she died of breast cancer, but African-American singer Minnie Riperton is one artist whose 1975 hit single “Lovin’ You,” will continue to regale us through the years.

That, and her extraordinary five-and-a-half octave vocal range.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in January 1976, Riperton was one of the first celebrities to go public with her diagnosis. She later went on to become a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, and in 1978, she received the American Cancer Society’s Courage Award, presented to her at the White House by President Jimmy Carter. She died at age 31 on July 12, 1979.

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Pancreatic Cancer Treatment: MRK003 + Gemcitabine Combo mixture offers new hope in fight versus pancreatic cancer. It’s an aggressive disease and worse, by the time symptoms show up enough to be diagnosed, it’s usually advanced and the cancer has spread to distant organs in the body. By this time, treatment options are limited and usually, futile.

When the cancer has spread, patients have an average survival of between two and six months. Five-year survival rates are very low — around five percent — according to the United States National Cancer Institute.

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Marijuana mouth spray for cancer pain may get FDA nod soon: Marijuana in a mouth spray? Now ain’t that cool? Before you fall of your chair, take note: the spray is a medication and not a new form of smokeless pot.

But the great news is that the marijuana-based mouth spray — the the world’s first medication developed from raw marijuana plants — may even get the nod of the United States Food and Drug Authority as soon as next year (2013) for use as treatment in cancer pain.

The spray, called Sativex, contains Tetranabinex and Nabidiolex, extracts of chemically and genetically characterized Cannabis sativa L. or marijuana plants. It has the same active components in the type of pot smoked by people around the world: delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD).

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Teen Breast Cancer: Booze raises risk in teenage girls with breast cancer family history: At the exact time when many teenage girls are most tempted to play “bad girl” and engage in binge drinking—that’s precisely when the main window of opportunity for breast cancer prevention occurs. New research shows that adolescent girls who avoid or limit their alcoholic intake significantly lower their chances of developing breast cancer later in their lives.

Girls and young women with a family history of breast disease in particular—either cancer or the benign lesions that can become cancer—would be better off avoiding booze, or at least limiting the amount they drink, the study says.

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Cancer Smell: Marine the Dog Can Smell Colon Cancer? Animals really are smarter than we think, ain’t they? During the recent World Cup, Paul the German Octopus mesmerized the world with his correct predictions on how the German team will fare on the pitch as well as correctly choosing the eventual winner of the tournament.

Now, we have a female labrabor from Japan called Marine who, with the use of her sense of smell, can apparently detect whether a person has colon cancer.

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Lower Breast Cancer Risk for Women With Hot Flashes? Maybe this is what our mom calls, a “blessing in disguise”? Women who have to endure hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms are less likely to develop breast cancer. According to researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, “women who ever experienced menopausal symptoms have a substantially reduced risk of breast cancer, and that severity of hot flushes is also inversely associated with risk.”

Says lead researcher and breast cancer epidemiologist Dr. Christoper Li, “We know that hormones are important to breast cancer risk, and we also know that menopausal symptoms occur primarily because of changes in hormones that women experience as they go through menopause.”

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