All cancers are not treated equally. Some attract a frenzy of attention -- breast cancer -- and some receive not much attention at all -- gallbladder cancer. Some are vigorously researched and studied. Others sit by idly, rarely the subject of investigation. Some are feverishly funded. Some never prosper by way of financial support. Yet they all share something very important in common. They are all cancer.

All cancers are marked by an uncontrollable division and spread of abnormal cells. And they are all capable of delivering shock and despair and even death to any one of us. And that makes each one -- brain cancer, cervical cancer, colon cancer, eye cancer, liver cancer, prostate cancer, stomach cancer, you name it -- worthy of equal attention.

And so I bring to you Cancer by the Numbers, a series of posts that will feature the basics about all sorts of cancer, beginning with the numbers -- the statistics -- to help define the prevalence of each cancer, followed by important facts about screening, diagnosis, treatment, survival, and more. I will cover the well-known cancers, the sort-of-known cancers, the barely-known cancers. And while I can only offer what I can track down on each form of cancer, I intend to dish out every piece of data I can dig up -- so we all can become a little more informed, a little more prepared should we have to personally do battle with any one of the 100 possible cancers out there.

The American Cancer Society reports that 1,399,790 new cancer cases will be diagnosed in 2006. This estimate does not include most carcinoma in situ (noninvasive cancer) cases and also does take into account the estimated one million cases of basal and squamous cell skin cancers that will be diagnosed this year. Of these predicted cases, about 564,830 will result in death -- that's more than 1,500 people each day. Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease, and accounts for one of every four deaths.

These numbers are staggering. But without further explanation, they are broad and all-encompassing and don't say much about how all the individual diseases add up. That's what I plan to do -- break it all down, cancer by cancer, until the numbers make sense. And the cancers do too.

I recently learned that the CBS website features a whole section of public service announcements about various topics -- such as child abduction, depression, HIV/AIDS, menopause, osteoporosis, and heart disease. But what first caught my eye when I was visiting this site was the topic of breast cancer -- because this is the disease I am fighting. And then I spotted a section about colorectal cancer. I was intrigued about a television network's commitment to public health issues. So I kept reading and learned a thing or two about the CBS Cares initiative -- that is also delivered through television spots.

I learned that hundreds of hours have been spent researching each featured subject. And I learned that experts in each field have been consulted and interviewed for accurate and up-to-date information. I found that the basics of each topic are included on the website as well as detailed information that viewers might not otherwise know. For breast cancer, readers can learn about breast cancer in general, about early detection, and about risk factors. And there are video clips of celebrity spokespeople -- like Marg Helgenberger and Melina Kanakaredes -- who share their voices on the topic. For colorectal cancer, readers can gain insight into the prevalence of the disease by region. They can learn about polyps, about warning signs, about treatment options, and about survival rates. And celebrities Stockard Channing and Charles S. Dutton voice their messages about this disease. Doctor interviews and information from the American Cancer Society are sprinkled into the content of these very thorough, informative, and enlightening pages.

Dr. Jay Winsten, Associate Dean and Director of the Frank Stanton Center at the Harvard School of Public Health says, "It is truly unprecedented for a television network to create a website that draws so extensively and effectively on the expertise of numerous world-leaders in pubic health research." And now, CBS has set the precedent.