#1: I think it's because cancer can be a drawn-out ordeal, and it's an invader of our bodies. Cancer seems to be an entity separate from us--a foreign attacker--versus a native organ failing. #2: Whoever puts out the first Tweet gets to define the phraseology. If the first one said "Succumbed to..." then all the copy/paste maestros out there would have held hands and jumped off the same rhetorical cliff (one can only wish.)
That's an interesting topic. Why can't the remains of those who have been cremated be referred to as "ashes" and not "cremains." When my older brother was cremated the guy at the funeral home said "cremains" so many times I had to tell him that my brother's ashes were not a non-dairy coffee creamer.
I think Cremains is just a way to make cremation more palatable for the majority of people. I guess you could mix it into your cereal @Ken Anderson
Cancer is just normal cells that go haywire. It's not like a virus or something that invades from outside the body. But regardless... "Kirstie Alley DIED today" would suffice. Now I want craisins. I need to go to bed.
I think I've told of the comedian (Steven Wright) who wanted to be cremated, then have his friends each take some ashes and throw them in the faces of people he disliked. "Steven says 'Hi!'"...then they get a face full.
When my sil died my brother had her cremated and took her ashes to a place that they'd both enjoyed...when he went to scatter them the wind shifted and he got a faceful of her.
I believe that some humans are destined to be more susceptible to cancer than others. Others are just missing something in their dna to help them not get cancer. If that is true then the answer to stop cancer is probably a missing gene or one that has changed over the thousands of years. You see so many healthy people die from cancer but another people suffering from some other lifelong ailment still live long lives. Researchers have all focused on attacking cancel cells and they may be on the wrong path all together. It's just a thought, if memory serves me it was already said there are a lot of dna keys that have not been tagged there are so many. Maybe one day the key will be unlocked and mankind will be cancer free.
Same with my brother, he is flying around outside Los Angeles in the high desert that he enjoyed hiking and living in. The sister also spread some of his ashes on the Pacific Beach San Diego. I had to frown a little on that since he had personally told me decades earlier he hated all the people that had moved in and taken over the area and the beaches. He was adamant about that. Both sisters and brother were all born at Bal Boa Naval Hospital San Diego, it has been razed long ago and doesn't exist any longer. It appears the oldest sister is going to stay in LA long as she is alive. I can understand the attachment of each of us to our home states no matter how bad they've become.
My father, older brother, and younger brother all died of cancer (ages 53/55/61,respectively.) Father died of pancreatic cancer, the other two of lung cancer. They all smoked and drank heavily. Of course there's a strong genetic factor there, but it may predispose and not necessarily control. I quit drinking at age 36 and am now 68, and heavily smoked cigars for over 10 years after I quit drinking...but not in my younger years. When you see stories of chain smokers and heavy drinkers who live longer-than-average lives, it makes you scratch your head and wonder.
It is a form of political correctness. Not your craisin addiction but euphemisms for death. Know one knows how death affects the loved ones. So we try to soften the blow. But, with regard to celebrities, it is just false caring or showing off.
Cancer research has focused on genes/DNA studies for years. When I was diagnosed 2 years ago they took an extensive family history and tested me for about 20 known genes; I was negative for all of them. (My father died of melanoma and my brother died of lung cancer but he was a life-long smoker.)