Thursday, December 07, 2006

A Well-Balanced Post

So to speak.

First off, several people mentioned that I should list some statistics about colorectal cancer. Here's some information from the American Cancer Society:
Excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in men and in women in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 106,680 new cases of colon cancer (49,220 men and 57,460 women) and 41,930 new cases of rectal cancer (23,580 men and 18,350 women) will be diagnosed in 2006.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is expected to cause about 55,170 deaths (27,870 men and 27,300 women) during 2006.

Almost all of those deaths would be prevented with regular screening, because cancer in the colon begins as benign polyps that are easily removed as part of a colonoscopy. It's only if left untreated that they can eventually become malignant, and it happens so slowly that for most people over the age of 50, a colonoscopy every five years (for some, even ten) is enough.

Here's one more note. There's also a procedure called a sigmoidoscopy, which is less expensive than a colonoscopy but only examines the last few feet of the colon. That means there's a "whole lotta colon" that the procedure just can't see.

All right, as a balancing factor to all that seriousness, here's a link from Curtis Schnitzler called Facts on Farts. It's windily exhaustive.

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