My mother's cancer wasn't her fault

Researchers from Stony Brook University have suggested environmental factors and behaviours cause cancer - this is an offence to those, like my mother, who have fought the disease

Stats such as ‘nine in ten cancers caused by lifestyle’ obscure the silent one that isn’t (Rex)

It’s not unusual, given the current climate, for a radio news headline to make my toast stick claggily in my throat, but this time it was different. Like anyone whose family has been touched by cancer, any news – be it about prevention or cure, survival or suffering – forces the hairs on the back of my neck to bristle. The news today, that researchers from Stony Brook University in New York have suggested environmental factors and behaviours are more likely to cause cancer than random cell mutations, felt like a blow to the gut.

I was 10 years old when my mum was first diagnosed with breast cancer. I can still remember the pattern on our old sofa, the one I repeatedly traced with my fingers as she told me all the usual stuff they tell kids at times like these: they caught it early, they can treat it, it’s no ones fault.

The first thought that runs through your head is simple; “Is my mum going to die?”. The second is more complex, and rears its head repeatedly if – like me – you’re unlucky enough to see the disease return again and again: “Why her? Why me? Why us?”

Studies like this one from Stony Brook aim to answer those questions, setting a path away from the theories of dumb luck that went before (those put forward by the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in America almost a year ago, for example) and placing responsibility firmly with the individual.

The realist in me knows it’s a wise move. I'm glad that there are scientists out there trying to make sure as few people as possible receive that life-altering diagnosis. Anything that means one less person has to go through the horror of chemo, one less daughter has to watch as every marker of their mum’s identity: skin, hair, nails, flesh, drops away before their eyes, can only be a good thing.

But stats such as "nine in 10 cancers caused by lifestyle" obscure the silent one that isn’t. Those thousands of others like my mum who did nothing wrong. Who didn’t smoke, or drink excessively, or eat badly. Those for whom cancer was something that simply came, pillaged and withdrew – only to strike two more times before retreating into the shadows. Never gone. Never forgotten.

This time last year my mum was coming to the end of her second round of chemo, after cancer had returned for a third time. My sister and I scrabbled around for something – anything – that might mitigate the awfulness. Probiotics, vitamins, a hastily bought NutriBullet – as if a smoothie a day might be enough to combat the effects of the intravenous biological warfare she was going through. We were trying to help, and maybe we did in the long run, but we also missed the point: we made her illness something she ‘should’ do something about, rather than something being done to her.

So consider this a plea from the unlucky minority; those for whom no amount of abstinence from the temptations and perils of modern life would ever be enough to stop genetics in its tracks. Tread the line between advocating prevention and attributing blame carefully. We have been through enough already.