The Salgi Esophageal Cancer Research Foundation

Christopher Hitchens was influential yet contorversial, a writer, journalist, atheist and esophageal cancer sufferer.  Hitchens passed away on December 15, 2011 of pneumonia after struggling with esophageal cancer since June of 2010. 

“I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient,” BBC News reported that he wrote in an August 2010 Vanity Fair essay.

To read more about Hitchens and his struggle with esophageal cancer, click here.

To read Vanity Fair’s “Toast” to Hitchens, click here.

CBC News reported earlier this week that “Overall cancer incidence and death rates fell between 2004 and 2008, according to a new U.S. report.”  One million deaths from cancer were said to be avoided.  

However, the report also shows that “certain cancers have increased over the past 10 years.”  On the list of cancers on the rise is esophageal adenocarcinoma. 

The article states that “researchers believe the increase in esophageal adenocarcinoma and cancers of the pancreas, liver, and kidney may be caused by rising rates of obesity, which may prevent cancers from being detected in their earliest stages.”

To read more click here