It wasn't my fault

Mornings are difficult places in my life - never been very good at them, have long considered that 6am is better treated as bedtime rather than wake-up time.  However, I stopped working nightshifts long ago and the unbridled nightly partying hasn't yet started (although wandering around London in evening dress at dawn is something that everyone should experience!) so I do have to pull myself from the arms of Morpheus before repeat of the Archers is over (that's a joke, you understand).
One of the big dilemmas in our house is what station the radio is tuned to... Was Radio4, because that's where the truth is (if it ain't on the Today programme then I don't believe in it).  Then I got traumatised by being woken up by John Prescott in the morning - and face it, there are few people who wouldn't be pretty frightened by the thought of that gentleman in the bedroom... So we switched over to Radio 2, and happy times with the Togmeister.  Then Sir Terry decided to retire to Wogan Towers for the forseeable, only emerging for the odd charity show, and was replaced by Chris Evans.  Now he's funny - in small doses - but not really what I want to be awakened by.  So we're back to Radio 4, and Jim Naughtie gently bringing me the truth as I drag myself into consciousness.

So there I was this morning, gently smelling the coffee and gathering the energy to face the day... when the words started to filter through the fog.  Cancer, causes, new study published... The big joy of the Today programme is that if you miss something, you can be sure it will be back again in a few minutes.  They give you lots of warnings about what's coming up, then lots of reminders of what's just gone.  So I heaved myself up, gulped down half a pint of caffeine juice and prepared to hear the exciting new wisdom.

40% of all cancers could be avoided or prevented by simple lifestyle choices, they said.  130,000 cases a year, they said. "Many people believe cancer is down to fate or 'in the genes' and that it is the luck of the draw whether they get it.  Looking at all the evidence, it's clear that around 40% of all cancers are caused by things we mostly have the power to change." they said. Rah-rah-rah, whoopee,  light dawns, how can we have been so foolish all these years, that was the implication.  Pack in the fags, eat more fresh fruit and lose a bit of weight, bingo!
Well, whoopee-doo.
What about the other 60%?  Which group am I in? What about those of us who enjoy a glass of wine occasionally and could probably do to shift a few pounds, but try to look after ourselves.  How come it happened to us, then?  Is it my fault that I got cancer?  Did I need a few more satsumas in my Christmas stocking every year, should I have worked harder in PE as a child? Would that have made a difference?  I am carrying half a stone I'd like to lose mostly because my jeans would look better, but did that give me a dose of boob rot?  I never smoked, what did I do wrong? 

NO!
Let's all shout this out loud.  BREAST CANCER IS NOT MY FAULT.

Is there a causal link like the one between lung cancer and cigarettes... a product that the government in this country took £8.7billion in revenue (that's just the tobacco duty!)  from in 2009-10?  That's a known killer, but it's ok because it raises a lot of tax money.  No, there isn't any such link.

Breast cancer doesn't earn the treasury anything.  Neither do brain tumours, the bone cancer that's eaten half my neighbour's face recently, or the lymphatic cancer that put a good friend through hell a couple of years ago.  There is no real evidence to say what caused any of them.  Sometimes there's a faulty gene you can point at, but even then the relationship isn't one-to-one - some people with the BRCA genes don't ever develop cancer at all - so what triggered it in the ones that do?  Was it all our fault?

NO!

I want to go and shout it down the street again.

MY CANCER IS NOT MY FAULT.

LISA's CANCER IS NOT HER FAULT.

ROSE's CANCER IS NOT HER FAULT.  

KATH's CANCER IS NOT HER FAULT.

OUR CANCER IS NOT OUR FAULT!

Don't get me wrong.  It's great that we're identifying things that are responsible for cancer.  We know that tobacco smoking makes people die, we write it on the packets and if they still choose to buy it then well, they're adults making a choice I guess.  We know that the Human Papilloma Virus is a big factor in Cervical cancer, and I am glad that we're vaccinating young women to protect them - my oldest granddaughter is just coming up to that age and I hope that she will never have to worry about that particular threat.  It's good that we can find the lifestyle factors that put us at risk and let people know, so that they can make informed choices.  But it's not good to proclaim all this news to the world in such general terms, with such fanfare, that the message that hits the waiting ears of the eager Radio 4 listener is that it's easy to avoid cancer by just following all this good advice.  It's not that easy.  I know.

Rant over now, thank you for listening.
Actually, no, just one more thing.

GETTING CANCER WASN'T MY FAULT.