1. Paul Muldoon, Horse Latitudes (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006), p. 106.
2. Margaret Knowles and Peter Selby (eds), Introduction to the Cellular and Molecular Biology of Cancer, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. ix.
3. This is according to Cancer Research UK (
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org
/cancer-help/about-cancer/cancer-questions/how-many-different-types-of-cancer-are-there, accessed 18 December 2012). However, Lauren Pecorino states that ‘Over 100 types of cancer have been classified’ (Lauren Pecorino, Molecular Biology of Cancer: Mechanisms, Targets, and Therapeutics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 2).
4. Since age is the biggest risk factor for cancer, and life expectancy is higher, the incidence of cancer is higher today. Paul Scotting writes that before 1800, life expectancy was around 40–45. In developed countries, life expectancy has increased to around 80: ‘Our bodies now provide the necessary time for cancer to develop and so it has become one of the most common causes of death’ (Paul Scotting, Cancer: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2010), p. 6).
5. Wilfred Owen, Poems, ed. Jon Stallworthy (London: The Hogarth Press, 1985), p. 117.