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Cancer is not one disease but many diseases.

When you have a diagnosis of cancer, or any serious illness, your choices are basically to be passive and kind of accept whatever is offered you, or to be active and to learn about your disease, and understand your options, and be an active partner with your doctor. That's the course I took with all three of my cancers.

What I quickly learned after my diagnosis is that the world of a cancer patient has many parts and a good deal of uncertainty.

Although the elusive 'cure' may be a distant dream, understanding the true nature of cancer will enable it to be better controlled and less menacing.

Cancer touches every family in one way or another. As other diseases are brought under control, cancer is set to become the number one killer, and is already in epidemic proportions worldwide.

Cancer is a disease where the patient can contribute a great deal of help himself if he or she can retain their morale and their hopes.

Cancer is something that touches everyone's lives.

Cancer is really a DNA disease... We have these certain genes that prevent our cells from growing out of control at the expense of the body. And it's a pretty good, robust system. But if a couple of these genes fail, then that's when cancer starts, and cells start growing out of control.

Every single cancer is a genetic disease. Not necessarily inherited from your parents, but it's genetic changes which cause cancer. So as we sequence the genomes of tumours and compare those to the sequence of patients, we're getting down to the fundamental basis of each individual person's cancer.

Astonishingly, in spite of decades of research, there is no agreed theory of cancer, no explanation for why, inside almost all healthy cells, there lurks a highly efficient cancer subroutine that can be activated by a variety of agents - radiation, chemicals, inflammation and infection.