Right now there's a commercial on TV for the American insurance company AFLAC featuring veteran journalist Shuntaro Torigoe, who was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. It shows the 67-year-old reporter in what looks like home videos undergoing tests, or about to be operated on, or clowning around with his grown daughter. The voiceover mentions that he is still working while receiving treatment, and at the end of the ad the reporter himself says, "If you try to run away from cancer, you'll be scared of everything."

This message could be taken two ways: Either fight your cancer with all that's medically available or confront it as something you have to live with. Since the statement is in an advertisement for a company that offers supplemental hospitalization insurance for cancer patients, most likely the former implication is the intended one, but the commercial doesn't make a hard or sentimental sell. For once, the adorable AFLAC animatronic duck does not appear.

In a recent article in the tabloid Sankei Sports, Torigoe said he did the commercial because he wanted people to know that he has lived a normal life since he was first found to have rectal cancer. The reader may want to take this admission with a grain of salt given what has happened in the meantime. Surgery in October 2005 eliminated the first tumor, but a year later stage-four cancer was discovered in Torigoe's left lung and this summer a nonmalignant tumor was found in the right one.