Chasing the Cancer Answer
By Wendy Mesley for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

There are predictions that in the next generation, almost one in two North Americans will be diagnosed with cancer. After Canadian television host Wendy Mesley was diagnosed, she began a long and personal journey. She had followed all the Cancer Society’s rules for healthy living, but she still got sick. "I can accept that I have cancer, but I can't accept how common it is," she says. "If it was just me, I could live with that. But the number of people getting cancer is wrong. Our failure to do better fighting this disease is wrong. I just think we need to be a little wiser about the world we are creating."

Chasing the Cancer Answer travels around the world to find answers, by speaking with frustrated cancer victims, an outspoken American doctor, and activists working to increase awareness of prevention. Along the way, Wendy comes across disturbing clues about why more of us than ever are getting sick. Some explain rising cancer rates as a natural outcome of our aging population. It’s true that rates have increased in some elderly-onset forms of cancer, but the cancers are increasing at remarkable rates among other age groups too. Childhood cancers, for example, have risen over twenty percent in thirty years. Meanwhile, prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, thyroid and testicular cancers are all increasing, and all of these cancers have links to environmental contaminants. With so much focus on treatment, drugs and finding the ever-elusive cure, are we ignoring the importance of prevention through environmental protection?

44 minutes
© 2006
Purchase $199 DVD
Order No. QA-479
ISBN (DVD) 1-57295-933-9

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To rent or purchase this film, please visit the Icarus Films website

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