Blogger Martha Edwards wrote about it on June 4 -- the fact that cancer cases are soon to explode in Asia, despite the obvious health benefits of Asian-based diets.

It's not the Asian diet influencing rising cancer rates, though. It's the bad Western habits Asians are adopting that will inevitably lead these folks down a dangerous road.

Smoking, drinking, and consumption of unhealthy foods -- all contributors to various cancers -- will drive Asian cancer rates up by 60 percent by the year 2020. Larger aging populations and lack of prevention and treatment in developing countries will also drive this trend.

One in 18 men and women will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer during their lifetimes -- that translates into more than 150,000 people diagnosed and more than 52,000 colorectal cancer deaths each year, securing the disease as the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States.

Fortunately, mortality rates for this disease have been declining due to earlier screenings, awareness of symptoms, removal of polyps, and improved treatments through advances in research discoveries -- like today's genetic breakthroughs.

In a recent study, researchers identified a cell pathway critical in the development of colon cancer and also lung and stomach cancers.

STAT3 (signal transducer and activator of transcription 3) is the newest discovery and is a target regulated by PRPRT (receptor protein tyrosine phosphatase T), already identified to be mutated in these cancers.

"The role of protein tyrosine phosphatase in cancer is still an under-explored area," says Zhenghe John Wang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"Our study shows that receptor protein tyrosine phosphatase T regulates an important signaling pathway that is critical in cancer development. This identification will allow new approaches to pharmacological designs and facilitate alternative approaches for cancer treatment."

This study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS Online Edition Feb. 20-23, 2007), provides new hope for the development of drugs that will target this potentially deadly disease.

It is a they said, she said lawsuit of family against family as the children of Darrell Wayne Perry, a Nashville songwriter with credits that include Tim McGraw's Not a Moment Too Soon; Lorrie Morgan's What Part of No; Toby Keith's A Woman's Touch, I Only Miss You, and Every Promise I Ever Made; accuse their evangelical preaching aunt Darlene Bishop, and sister to the deceased, of causing the death of Perry by promising to cure him with prayer after his throat cancer diagnosis in 2003.

Perry's children say Bishop claimed she was cured of cancer through prayer and promised to cure her brother in the same way. According to news reporting, in her book Your Life Follows Your Words, Bishop wrote that faith and prayer cured her of her cancer and her brother Perry of his cancer. In a deposition, she is said to have admitted she was never diagnosed with cancer by a physician, even though she believed she had the disease.

After Perry's death from cancer, Bishop became the executor to his estate. According to the children, Bishop has not given them any of their inheritance, estimated at $750,000 dollars. The children are suing their aunt for wrongful death, clergy malpractice and fraud. Bishop denies all allegations.

The level of grief and the depth of sadness felt when losing a family member to cancer is without measure. You would think that nothing worse could possibly happen. This turn of events following the cancer diagnosis and death of Perry, however it turns out, and wherever the truth is to be found, has reached a new depth in an abyss of empty darkness.

Deep within the pages of ancient texts detailing the remedies used by Chinese medicine practitioners, is there a cure for cancer waiting to be rediscovered? The global pharmaceutical company Merck thinks there might be a reference or two to natural cancer-fighting products used by healers then that is obscurely hidden and not known now in modern western medicine.

Merck has entered into a deal with Hong Kong's Chi-Med to look for evidence of promising products that the pharmaceutical company can research and test in clinical trials. According to the article Merck looks for ancient Chinese cancer cure written by Susie Mesure, "Western pharmaceutical companies are increasingly outsourcing their drug discovery work, with many looking east for the solution to medical mysteries that Western doctors cannot solve."

Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM, is a practice of medicine that combines medicinal herbs, nutrition, meditation, massage, exercise and acupuncture with an applied philosophy in the harmonious balance of yin and yang for treating illness. In all fairness, because this system of medicine has developed over thousands of years, and my understanding limited by Western educational influence, the definition I have given is a very brief, and possibly incomplete, overview of TCM. If you are interested in learning more about TCM, begin by visiting Traditional Chinese Medicine at Wikipedia.

Chi-Med will be scanning information in a library of 10,000 natural substances for those that might hold potential in a cure for cancer. It will be interesting what they find.

The lung cancer drug Gefitinib has been taken off shelves in the United States due to ineffectiveness. But it remains effective in some Taiwanese lung cancer patients, according to a study published in the journal Lung Cancer.

The study, conducted by the National Health Research Institutes, involved 65 non-small-cell lung cancer patients and found that more than 50 percent of participants responded to the drug therapy -- while only 10 percent respond in Western studies.

A genetic mutation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) was found in most patients who responded to Gefitinib. The mutation is rare in Western countries but much more common in East Asian countries where the mutation increases the likelihood of developing adenocarcinoma.

About 6,800 Taiwanese patients develop non-small-cell lung cancer every year. Of these, 65 percent of cases are adenocarcinoma. Of this group, 57 percent will have the genetic mutation. And roughly half will respond to Gefitinib.

The National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), established to explore complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science; to integrate scientifically proven CAM practices into conventional medicine; to train CAM researchers; and disseminate authoritative information to the public and professionals -- offers these definitions for alternative, complementary and integrative therapy.

Alternative therapy is used in place of conventional western medicine such as special diets to treat cancer instead of undergoing surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy recommended by a conventional doctor.

Complementary medicine is used together with conventional medicine such as using aromatherapy to help lessen a patient's discomfort following surgery.

Integrative medicine combines both mainstream western medical treatment and CAM therapies for which there is known high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.

Based on the 2002 edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics report, in the US, up to 62 percent of adults use some form of CAM. Although the survey indicated that people who use CAM come from all backgrounds -- according to the survey -- some people more likely than others to use CAM are women, those with higher educational levels, people who have been hospitalized in the past year, and former smokers when compared with current smokers or those who have never smoked.

Research has proven some CAM therapies to be valid, while finding others useless, and research continues. NCCAM offers information on research, clinical trials, highlights and alerts, health topic fact sheets, and the CAM Online Continuing Education Series, presented in eight chapters, for health care providers and the public to learn more about CAM.

It is good to express a matter in two ways simultaneously so as to give it both a right foot and a left. Truth can stand on one leg, to be sure; but with two it can walk. -- Nietzsche

Integrated medicine combines mainstream western medical practices with complementary and alternative therapies -- two ways simultaneously -- giving medical treatments both a right foot and a left, in providing optimal outcomes. Seek a second opinion, and a third opinion, and a fourth opinion, if necessary, until you are comfortable that the chosen course of treatment feels right for you -- and is one you can believe in completely.

Magic or medicine? That's the question nurse practitioner Kathy Turner at the Stanford University School of Medicine wants to find the answer to and is currently conducting a study of touch therapy. The therapy is described as a noninvasive form of energy-balancing work that aims to promote deep relaxation and is attributed with easing nausea, fatigue, feelings of fear and worry, pain, and lymphedema. According to practitioners of touch therapy, a person's body is surrounded by a field of energy, and unblocking the body's energy flow can aid in healing and maintaining health. For many in the Western medical community, it is pure hooey. But the centuries old philosophy and practice involving a body's energy fields is deeply rooted in Eastern medicine.