Cancer Survival Quotes & Sayings

Cancer is everybody's cause. — Laura Ziskin

The survival rate of Dr Burton's patients approximately doubled the maximum survival rate of conventionally treated patients. Had these findings pertained to a chemotherapy drug instead of IAT, massive amounts of funding would have been allocated to investigate the drug. Once again, the politics of cancer barred a potentially valuable treatment from reaching the public. — Jared Diamond

I cannot escape the feeling that I was, at best, a cancer tourist, that my survival means I dabbled. — David Rakoff

I have been a vegetarian for about 10 years. And it really was due to the reading that I did. And they explain so that you understand why it's important for the planet's survival along with compassion for animals. It certainly made it much easier for me. I lost weight really fast. My mother died from cancer so this is all very personal to me. And I just would like the planet to be a better place. And I think you'll find a vegetarian diet to be really incredible these days — Linda Blair

To argue that universal health care would wreck the U.S. lead in cancer survival, you'd have to argue that universal health care would wreck the entire U.S. economy. — Timothy Noah

Cancer got me over unimportant fears, like getting old. — Olivia Newton-John

I would say the number one thing with cancer is not to let it scare you because when you are afraid, it destroys your immune system. — Tammy Faye Bakker

Cancer is an expansionist disease; it invades through tissues, sets up colonies in hostile landscapes, seeking "sanctuary" in one organ and then immigrating to another. It lives desperately, inventively, fiercely, territorially, cannily, and defensively - at times, as if teaching us how to survive. To confront cancer is to encounter a parallel species, one perhaps more adapted to survival than even we are. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

African-American women who develop breast cancer are more likely to die from the disease than White women of the same age. Survival rates are worse among African-Americans for colon, prostate and ovarian cancers as well. — Frank C. Garland

Cancer is enough to get my attention. — Charles Grodin

I'm not sure what Essiac does to extend cancer survival, and for all we know it may not have this effect. On the other hand, it's not toxic and my patients have reported feeling good while taking it, so why not support them? — Abram Hoffer

Like with every form of cancer, early detection is what it is all about. I urge everyone to learn the facts about this condition. It can be prevented with testing, and it can be beaten if caught early! — Rod Stewart

Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

That is the beauty of cancer, it tells you that your days are limited, that you could die at any point. It is that perspective that allows you to live a better life while you're here. — Shelley Hamlin

Cancer cells come pre-programmed to execute a well-defined cascade of changes, seemingly designed to facilitate both their enhanced survival and their dissemination through the bloodstream. There is even an air of conspiracy in the way that tumours use chemical signals to create cancer-friendly niches in remote organs. — Paul Davies

Cancer is not for sissies. — Suzanne Somers

We are survivors from the moment of diagnosis. — Peter Jennings

We see cancer patients battling death as valiant, and we think that if they try hard enough, they'll beat it. In truth, cancer is an equal-opportunity killer and is impervious to moral virtues and emotional strength. No amount of courage increases a patient's likelihood of survival. For every courageous patient who survives, there is another courageous patient who does not. Of course you'd never know that from popular media, where patients wage battle against cancer and win, and where almost everyone survives CPR and looks remarkably good hooked up to a breathing machine. — Bloomsbury Publishing

In 1975, the respected British medical journal Lancet reported on a study which compared the effect on cancer patients of (1) a single chemotherapy, (2) multiple chemotherapy, and (3) no treatment at all. No treatment 'proved a significantly better policy for patients' survival and for quality of remaining life.' — Barry Lynes

Better treatment and detection methods have also improved the survival rate for people with cancer, and for the first time in history, this year the absolute number of cancer deaths in the U.S. has decreased. — Ike Skelton

Now I wear my cancer like I wear my blackness I'm proud! — Mr. T

After approximately two decades and several billion dollars ... Among the various types of cancer that account for 78% of the incidence..the upward trend in survival rates has not exceeded a few % ... a far gloomier picture than has been generally conveyed to a hopeful public by our leading cancer research institutions ... A generally passive lay press has been the means of transmission. — Daniel S. Greenberg

The question was, which would the chemo kill first: the cancer or me? — Lance Armstrong

My family and I participate in 'Cycle for Survival.' it was started by a friend of my wife's who lost his wife to a rare form of cancer. — Brian Krzanich

So many of my family and friends had lost their battles against cancer. What could I do that my relatives and friends had not? What could I do that would be different? — Michael Milken

group of rookies can outperform individual experts. Behavioral scientists at the University of Chicago showed that expert pathologists poorly predict a cancer patient's survival time based on viewing a biopsy slide; yet when the decision of a group of less experienced individuals is aggregated, the readings are much more accurate than the predictions of individual experts. — Liz Wiseman

Cancer gave me an understanding of the point of all this. To survive. Most of our lives it is easy but for the moments when it becomes difficult, when accident or sickness or sadness strikes, it's just about remembering one thing. You must simply survive. — Shaun Hick

Incredibly, nearly 70,000 Young Adults between 15-39 are diagnosed with cancer each year. 10,000 will not survive. This is a very important stat for me, because I fall in this category. I am one of these statistics. Unlike every other age group, there has been no improvement in the 5-year survival of young adults in 30 years. That means many young adults have the same chance of getting cancer and dying from it as they did in the 1970's. This is not OK. — Jenna Morasca

Why target two and a half million innocent newborns and children?" Barbara Loe Fisher asks of the hep B vaccine. The implication behind the word innocent is that only those who are not innocent need protection from disease. All of us who grew up during the AIDS epidemic were exposed to the idea that AIDS was a punishment for homosexuality, promiscuity, and addiction. But if disease is a punishment for anything, it is only a punishment for being alive. When I was a child, I asked my father what causes cancer and he paused for a long moment before saying, "Life. Life causes cancer." I took this as an artful dodge until I read Siddhartha Mukherjee's history of cancer, in which he argues not only that life causes cancer but that cancer is us. "Down to their innate molecular core," Mukherjee writes, "cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves." And this, he notes, "is not a metaphor. — Eula Biss

We are all precancerous. — George Carlin

I would imagine that fighting an unwelcome colonial occupation is like fighting a malignant cancer. Destroying the cancerous cells one by one becomes a necessity for one's very survival. Shooting down members of a colonial occupying force one by one is the exact equivalent of destroying those cancerous cells. And to some extent, one assumes, more satisfying to those trying to be rid of the cancer. — Dimitris Mita

When you receive a cancer diagnosis, you're more vulnerable than at any other time in your life. I've personally had the experience twice. My only hope for survival was alternatives. But that was my decision, what I thought was best for me. — Suzanne Somers

Preventative medicine has to be the direction we go in. For example, if colon cancer is detected early - because a person knew he had a genetic risk and was having frequent exams - the surgery is relatively inexpensive and average survival is far greater than 10 years. — Craig Venter

Chemotherapy's success record is dismal. It can achieve remissions in about 7% of all human cancers; for an additional 15% of cases, survival can be "prolonged" beyond the point at which death would be expected without treatment. This type of survival is not the same as a cure or even restored quality of life. — John Diamond

I have no qualms about saying I am more confident in the medical treatment in America. The breast cancer survival rate is 20 per cent higher than in the UK. — Koo Stark

Cancer Is an opportunity to sit down and look into yourself and find the answers. Yes, it's serious, but it's not the end-all. — Melissa Etheridge

Survival rates for breast cancer are relatively good, but Krishnan has been around illness enough to know there is usually a cruel injustice about the way it strikes. Cranky patients defy the odds, while the kind ones, the ones who bake him cookies or bring him tomatoes from their garden, always seem to die early. Mortality rates utilize the law of averages without consideration for who is most deserving. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda