BURDEN

A Joyce ceremonial caramel cake

Yum!

Did you know that the number of cigarettes consumed in China this year, if laid end-to-end, would extend to the moon and back nearly four times?  Well, neither did I, and in fact I’m actually not absolutely sure of it – I just made a quick  back-of-the envelope calculation using my cell phone.  But whether that’s right or not isn’t important – the average Chinese smoker consumes 22 cigarettes daily, and the total consumed adds up to a yearly total of 2.5 trillion.  Those numbers alone invite further arithmetic:  for instance, 2.5 trillion cigarettes divided by 22 cigs per day times 365 days per year suggests that there are 311 million smokers in China.  India may be nearly as bad.

So, for your homework:  If all the cigarette butts generated in China were dumped in Nebraska, how deep would the pile be?

All this is meant to introduce today’s topic: why is the worldwide burden of cancer increasing so rapidly?  Apparently it is, you know, as the following link describes:

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2016/global-cancer-symposium?cid=eb_govdel

I am aware that most of you won’t read this link, so I will give you the short answer.  There is higher cancer “burden” (expense, suffering, death) throughout the world because poor countries are getting richer.  Being richer, they can afford better health care.  Better health care means that fewer of their people die of malaria, HIV, syphilis, cholera – etc.  This allows them to live long enough to die of cancer, and it gives them pocket money to buy certain agents of doom, such as cigarettes. 

Hell!  There was more to this blog – as there is more to this article – but my computer just ate it all, every word.  And it is time to watch the Seahawks.