We would think Mother Nature would have made the ovaries impenetrable to outside threats—like ovarian cancer—to ensure the survival of our species. Maybe she tried. After all, she did manufacture not one, but two ovaries. One could say she didn’t place her eggs all in one basket, or in one ovary, if you will.
Of the big three cancers that are hormone-dependent—prostate, breast, and ovarian—ovarian cancer has but 12 percent of the incidences of the other two cancers with 23,400 diagnosis a year. The odds of contracting it are 1 in 55. On the other hand, ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal of the three cancers as three of four women will see less than five more years of life after diagnosis. The disease claims 13,900 lives a year.
Maybe the deadliness of this cancer was Mother Nature’s way to get our attention so we might be more motivated to search for its cause, putting an end to the disease, if not an end to the extinction of our species. We don’t need to search far.