[smacktoward]

"Some people say..." openings can be problematic, because they can get the reader wondering, who? Who says that? Which pulls them away from the point you're trying to make. Better to start with a specific example of someone saying it: "John Smith thought men couldn't get breast cancer. On April 5, he found out he was wrong."

I really like the idea of jumping straight into a scenario (or anecdote), I remember having been suggested by my teachers in middle school to do so.

Yeah, this is an effective technique that's nearly as old as storytelling itself. It's called in medias res:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res

The name is Latin for "into the middle of things," which describes the idea: throw the reader into the middle of the story first, revealing earlier events later on where necessary. This lets you open on a dramatic note right away, which grabs the reader's attention, while setting up little enigmas -- who is this person? Why is she doing what she's doing? What does she want? -- for the reader to solve, which keeps them involved.