You might think, like many people do, that smokeless tobacco products are safe alternatives to cigarettes. Wrong.

According to researchers at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, smokeless tobacco users are exposed to higher amounts of carcinogenic molecules than cigarette smokers. In a study of 182 users of chewing tobacco or oral snuff and 420 cigarette smokers, they found snuff users were exposed to higher levels of 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) than smokers. NNK is a human carcinogen known to produce lung cancer. In laboratory animals, it also contributes to cancers of the pancreas, nasal mucosa, and liver.

Published in the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, this study serves to remind us that there is only one safe alternative to smoking -- not smoking.

My new breast cancer friend recently sat through her second infusion of Adriamycin and Cytoxan -- the long-time traditional chemotherapy combination for breast cancer -- and all the while, listened to another breast cancer survivor share her thoughts on these two drugs.

This woman told my friend she opted to stray from these chemotherapy agents because of their toxic side effects, because of their combined potential for causing other cancers, like leukemia. She instead took another drug route and was happy for her decision. My friend, however, was scared.

My friend returned home from her treatment and found herself reading a Cancer Blog post reporting that Adriamycin and Cytoxan may no longer be the gold standard treatment for breast cancer, that Taxotere and Cytoxan may become the preferred, safer option.

Fear and panic set in, and my friend e-mailed me, in search of perspective from a recipient of the drugs she was starting to believe are both ineffective and cancer-causing.

I am not a doctor. I am not an expert. I am not qualified in any way to represent the facts about medical research. But I am surviving breast cancer. And I did spend eight difficult weeks under the influence of Adriamycin and Cytoxan, given every two weeks in a dose-dense fashion. So I have an opinion about these drugs -- and about most things breast cancer related.

I shared my opinion with my friend, who has since decided to proceed with her prescribed treatment plan. I told her that in rare cases, chemotherapy can cause a second cancer, like leukemia. But this is not common, and the unlikely risk does not outweigh the benefit of receiving chemotherapy to address the cancer at hand.

I also shared with my friend that we can only benefit from therapies that are available and effective at the time of our treatment. Studies prove that Adriamycin and Cytoxan work -- that's why so many women are treated with this accepted method. Drugs in the research pipeline may one day definitively replace what is available today. But we must be OK with what we receive -- because we have no control over what lies ahead. We must live in the here and now -- with the knowledge that should our cancers return, bigger and better options may await us.

Consider Herceptin. Once not even an option for women with aggressive HER2 positive breast cancer, this targeted drug may be the magic bullet in an attack against this disease. I received Herceptin. My friend will receive Herceptin. Timing was on our side for this medical breakthrough.

Timing may not have been on our side should a new gold-standard drug treatment emerge and replace Adriamycin and Cytoxan. But we can still trust these two drugs will do their jobs, will prevent a recurrence of a disease that is so much more treatable today than it was years ago. Lucky for us.

For 20 years, commentator Debra Jarvis has been dealing with cancer as a hospital chaplain. Last year, she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer. And she quickly discovered whenever she brought up the topic of her diagnosis, all people wanted to talk about was her hair.

Cancer is not about the hair, she says, but it's the first thing people seem to talk about.

"There goes the hair," one friend said to Jarvis just after her diagnosis. She was trying to be light and funny. Jarvis didn't find any humor in the comment -- but she did start to think about the whole preoccupation with hair, and she was able to make some sense of it all.

Cancer is really about death. People die from cancer all the time. But it's impolite to ask, are you going to lose your life? So people ask about the hair.

When we go bald, we are marked. Our bald head shoves death in the face of those around us. People really hate to think about dying, Jarvis says. So they don't ask, what's your prognosis? That would be too nosy and could lead to uncomfortable discussions. It's safer to ask about the hair.

Jarvis concludes that people focus on the hair because it's so hard to talk about fear and pain and grief. But if we can stand to talk about these issues, she says, then when we talk about the hair, it will really be about the hair.