Most cancer types 'just bad luck'
Source: BBC
A US team were trying to explain why some tissues were millions of times more vulnerable to cancer than others.
The results, in the journal Science, showed two thirds of the cancer types analysed were caused just by chance mutations rather than lifestyle.
Cancer Research UK said a healthy lifestyle would still heavily stack the odds in a person's favour.
In the US, 6.9% of people develop lung cancer, 0.6% brain cancer and 0.00072% get tumours in their laryngeal (voice box) cartilage at some point in their lifetime.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30641833
JEFF9K
(1,935 posts)That's one of the advantages of being small.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)JEFF9K
(1,935 posts)and being tall.
I have a book, which I just took from the shelf of my home library, entitled THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR HEIGHT, by Thomas T. Samaras. (Don't read anything into this, I am 5'10' and own thousands of books.)
He tells of studies by Albanes, of the National Cancer Institute, and Jones, Schatzkin, Micozzi, and Taylor, finding that "taller" men had a 50% higher cancer rate than the shortest group of men in the study. He tells of a study finding that the tallest group of women had 2.1 times more breast and colorectal cancer.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)But we know that obesity correlates with cancer too. About women and breast cancer. Shouldn't it correlate with breast size?...
JEFF9K
(1,935 posts)What I seem to remember, from reading the book several years ago, is that the number of cells a person has is dependent on that person's height, and that heavier people at a given height have the same number of cells, but the cells are bigger.
I do know, from my study of veganism, that toxins are stored in body fat and that people who eat only plants have a much lower cancer risk.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Sounds reasonable, but I don't recall what, if anything, they mentioned in our nursing classes about that.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)We have linear DNA, and the enzymes that copy our DNA need a little bit of DNA past the copying to hold onto.
As a result, every single time our cells divide, we lose a small piece of our DNA. Eventually, that cuts into something important.
(Just after conception, another enzyme adds a bunch of junk to the ends of our DNA to give some junk we can afford to lose. But the junk will eventually run out)
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)spike91nz
(180 posts)will produce a chance rating for each outcome, so the issue is hardly that causal relationships are lacking. Rather, the mechanics of the analysis will produce a chance-like understanding of projected possibilities. A Bayesian statistical approach would show an increase in risks associated with exposure to chemicals or radiation and constrain the projected spread. It remains a range, as any projection must, but given sufficient causal constraints the occurrence will trend almost to certainty. It is a chance that one might die from riding a motorcycle but the odds go up dramatically after one purchases a motor cycle and drives it in an irresponsible manner. Chance, or luck, is a result of any statistical projection and this announcement appears to undermine an environmental causality. It isn't chance, in a conventional sense, if we could responsibly do some preventative strategy to significantly reduce the projected risks.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Your genetics are the gun, but your environment is a bullet (or lack of bullet)
As someone who is somewhat Chemically Sensitive, the people I know of that are also Chemcially Sensitive do not end up with cancer. We avoid everything as we watch others loading their grocery carts up with crap.
Everything from Lysol sprays, fabric softener, and Glade and bags of "food stuffs" like Cheetos. Whenever I see a young couple with kids wildly filling up their grocery carts with sodas and pretzels and all the "home deoderizing products," I get very sad.
I lost one of my best friends back in 2007. She was heavily addicted to perfume. Macy's perfume counters smell less than she did.
And she lived on that coffee creamer crap, which actually contains paint thinner!
lunasun
(21,646 posts)to cancer. I used to hate being sensitive now I think of it as possibly an extra added sense of sorts
appalachiablue
(41,052 posts)glinda
(14,807 posts)MDS which we will see in droves shortly. Totally fatal. Benzene (fracking) and other chems cause it.
loudsue
(14,087 posts)rexcat
(3,622 posts)Precursor to Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and other forms of leukemia. AML is one of the worst forms of leukemia with a very poor prognosis unless you receive a bone marrow transplant from a donor.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelodysplastic_syndrome
glinda
(14,807 posts)Sad thing is it is not tested for right away. And requires a bone tap for it also. And if found the only hope is younger age to get transplant.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)When cancer was far more rare than it is today. Just luck.
I realize longevity explains some of it, but in ancient Greece and Egypt people had very long lifespans and cancer was exceedingly rare. Again, just a bunch of super lucky people I guess.
Who do they think they're kidding with this?
Orrex
(63,084 posts)Do you suppose that lung cancer or cancer of the prostate were studied in detail among the poor and working classes?
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)But I don't believe it would explain the huge disparity. And yes, I am under the impression that cancer was studied extensively in the poor and working classes a century ago. I remember reading that particular types of cancer were identified in chimney sweeps in the 1700's. This just does not begin to explain the steady rise in cancer rates over the last century.
Orrex
(63,084 posts)I don't dispute that environmental factors are a likely exacerbating cause, but I suspect that the issue is more complex than is commonly portrayed.
sarge43
(28,939 posts)in general more people are living long enough to succumb. Until the 20th century, infectious diseases were far more lethal, especially for the malnourished (a lot of those) and children. Along with malaria, smallpox probably killed more people than all the wars and cancer combined. According to the Wiki article, by the 18th century smallpox was killing 400K Europeans each year.
Another, better early diagnosis, better record keeping and flat better understanding of the disease.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)Because that would be ridiculous.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)I think the scientists trained in medicine and science and experts in their field doing research for years know a bit more about it than you or I, agreed?
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)Rigorously applied critical thinking is essential to differentiating the two.
Orrex
(63,084 posts)Here are some numbers for you:
In 1900, the average life expectancy was 46.3 males and 48.3 females. By 1998 it had increased to 73.8 and 79.5 respectively.
Median age when cancer is diagnosed is 67.
So if the average life expectancy had people dying 20 years before the average age of diagnosis, does it not seem likely that we'd see fewer diagnoses? And with people now surviving, on average, long enough to reach the average age of diagnosis, it would follow that more diagnoses occur.
In short, claiming that the numbers are tainted by "shills working for polluters" isn't an argument; it's a spouting of propaganda. It's akin to the wacky claims of Dr. Oz and others who insist that we need to "detoxify," etc.
Betty
(1,352 posts)In a direct comparison of the percentage of older people then and now who get cancer. Of those who did make it to old age back in the day, what were the cancer rates? Probably not possible given the records back then would not be accurate enough to really get a good picture of the prevalence of cancer in the elderly say 150 years ago.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Your group of modern people would contain a whole lot of people who would have died 150 years ago - for example, open heart surgery saves a lot of lives. That lets them live long enough for their cancer to occur.
If you're looking for is-cancer-modern-or-not, consider that part of our immune system is designed to fight cancer and only cancer. It does not work against bacterial or viral infections. If cancer was extremely rare, or only a disease of the old, we wouldn't have evolved that.
For that part of the immune system to have evolved, cancer has to have been common enough back in the prehistoric era that there was an advantage to wasting energy on a cancer-fighting part of the immune system.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)Your argument does not hold up to scrutiny. For example, there are now large numbers of women diagnosed with breast cancer in their 30s and 40s. That would have been almost unheard of a century ago.
And surely you don't deny the existence of industry shills. That would be flat-out irrational. Frankly, the comment I was responding to was so nonsensical, I assumed the poster had been soaking up the output of right-wing front groups.
zazen
(2,978 posts)Pregnancy in adolescence confers a significant lifelong protective benefit against breast cancer. First time pregnancy in one's 30s, alternatively, greatly increases the risk.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)I've read about this and the protective effect of childbearing is weak. It also applies to older women, having to do with cumulative lifelong exposure to hormones. I very much doubt it has anything to do with the aggressive breast cancers seen in younger women.
It is wrong to say that late or no pregnancy "greatly increases risk". It doesn't increase risk, it's just that early childbearing creates a protective effect, and that's an important distinction to make. And once again, it's a weak effect at best.
zazen
(2,978 posts)I said confers greater risk.
Pre-cancerous lesions in first-time mothers in their 30s can see accelerated growth in the presence of the chemical changes of pregnancy. These lesions are more susceptible, even with a second full-term pregnancy, just much less so (and radically less so with pregnancy in one's teens).
I'm not looking up scholarly citations for you. Scientific knowledge about breast cancer is consensus based, and there are many debates among the experts. I've no doubt you could find a study on all ends of the spectrum. However, the increased risk of BC growth in the event of first time pregnancy in one's 30s or later is a claim with wide support.
Later.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)For one thing, breast cancer rates began to climb before women had access to reliable birth control.
Orrex
(63,084 posts)Last edited Sun Jan 4, 2015, 10:45 AM - Edit history (1)
After you provide that, you can tell us what the actual rate of breast cancer was a century ago. And then you can tell us why it has changed or remained the same since then.
Has the incidence of all cancers increased in the past century, even when we account for different rates of diagnosis? Or is the perceived increase specific to late-onser cancers?
The issue is far more complex than you want to accept, and dismissing it as a conspiracy of shills is simply buying into the nonsense you might find on Natural News.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)I don't see you backing up any of your statements here. You've got plenty of snark, but that seems to be about it.
You're the one who seems bound and determined to deny things that are demonstrably true, such as the prevalence of shills and front groups.
Orrex
(63,084 posts)And you want me to document your nonsense for you?
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)You have provided absolutely nothing substantive - just snark and evasion. And some strawmen thrown in for good measure.
I'm not wasting anymore time responding to you.
Orrex
(63,084 posts)Further, judging by your posts here, you're in no position to call anyone out for snark or evasion.
Good luck to you.
Elmer S. E. Dump
(5,751 posts)It's still about chance, but today there are many more chances.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Modern man brought a lot of the increased rates himself,mand the major part is just that human cells live longer and reproduce many more times even as they age...the formula for cancer...old age is the main one.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)If you die from a heart attack at 50, you can't be diagnosed with cancer at 70.
No, they lacked modern medicine to determine that it was cancer.
Cancer is just something that happens in us. Otherwise, we wouldn't have evolved the part of our immune system that fights cancer - there would be no need for it if cancer was utterly unknown before the modern era.
Environmental effects can increase your risk. But increased risk is not the same as causing risk. There's people who die of lung cancer who never smoked. And there's people who smoke like chimneys who never get lung cancer.
The difference? The one who got lung cancer got unlucky with cell division. The one who didn't got extremely lucky with cell division.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)Hence the low *median* life expectancy. And how would you explain the rise of childhood cancer in the 20th century? Surely you're not denying that cancer rates have exploded in the industrialized world?
Obviously people have varying degrees of susceptibility to cancer but it's more like a game of Russian Roulette where the polluters keep putting more bullets in the gun and you'd better hope that you're damned lucky, genetically speaking.
And btw, it's my understanding that they had begun to identify cancer in ancient Greece. Obviously not with the accuracy of the era of the microscope, but it's not like they had no clue.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)There's common diseases we now easily treat. Those diseases killed lots of people before they lived long enough for their cancer to be detected.
For example, high blood pressure. A heart attack in ancient Greece means you're dead. Today, hypertension is treated before it causes a heart attack. And if you have a heart attack anyway, it's fairly routine to treat it without killing you.
Lack of children dying from other diseases (smallpox, etc) as well as lack of proper medical records or routine autopsies. We just don't know how many of them died from cancer. We can't assume they did not die of cancer just because there isn't a death certificate saying "cancer".
Except this paper says the opposite.
Yes, there are things that can drastically increase the chances you'll get cancer. But those things are not nearly as much of a death sentence as your statement implies. Nor are they really so widespread.
For example, asbestos. We treat it as "don't touch or you'll get cancer", yet mesothelioma only occurred in people working in factories making asbestos products. Or to a much smaller extent, installers of the most friable of those products (ex. insulation).
They also didn't do routine autopsies. So while they may have found tumors, we have no idea how many ancient Greeks had cancer.
CrawlingChaos
(1,893 posts)You're saying childhood cancer has increased because children of today didn't have a chance to die of small pox first? Seriously? A century ago, they knew what leukemia was and they knew how to identify it. You're making all kinds of assumptions and you're all over the place. Something tells me there's no point in continuing.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)There's two problems.
First, lack of proper records. We just don't know what really killed a lot of people until relatively recently.
Second, there's a lot more differences between then and now. Let's say 100 of every 100k died of cancer in 1900, and 150 of every 100k died of cancer in 2014. Has the rate really gone up? Maybe, maybe not. You can't just take the +50 and say it's gone up. You also have to account for the other drastic changes in medicine and public health since 1900. And I don't know an easy way to do that.
hack89
(39,171 posts)cancer mainly kills the elderly. Secondly, in the absence of routine autopsies it iwould have been impossible to determine if in fact they did die from cancer.
NickB79
(19,113 posts)And still drank "tonics" to cure diseases that were in some cases composed of actual, potentially lethal chemicals.
And I note you provide nothing to back up your assertion that people in Greece and Egypt lived a long time. SOME people did (the elite, rich, etc). The common men, women, and slaves? Not so much.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)nolabels
(13,133 posts)By the way, thanks for helping me out figuring out a little puzzle that i was wondering about. I wanting to put something funny in the post but instead found this little link. Makes a lot of sense to me
Conflict in the Newtonian Worldview
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEsQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkingmatters.org.nz%2F2009%2F11%2Fconflict-in-the-newtonian-worldview%2F&ei=H4irVK2UBMHUoASKwoHoBg&usg=AFQjCNG7_ya3OGCV2U_1_TB4hKNWOtt_9w
watoos
(7,142 posts)I worked around methyl Chloride and tin tetrachloride, and I got cancer. I was lucky, I caught it early. Doctors don't tell people why or how they got cancer. Scientists and stem cell biologists that I have read blame the environment way more so than heredity, although I do agree with one aspect of bad luck, if they build a power plant upwind from your house. it truly is bad luck.
evirus
(852 posts)Just because you can point to yourself and some other people who have without a doubt gotten cancer from environmental or lifestyle sources doesn't mean the article is wrong. You aren't even comparing anything your just saying it's wrong because you got cancer in a different way
jeff47
(26,549 posts)No? Then why did the part of our immune system that fights cancer evolve? It's a separate system that isn't used for fighting viral or bacterial infection. If cancer was unknown until the modern era, that would not have happened.
Orrex
(63,084 posts)True fact.
GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)from what I read, our immune system did NOT evolve some "part" that fights cancer. In fact:
The immune system has this blind spot by design an immune system that has an ability to attack itself leads to autoimmune diseases, so as protection, it screens out its own tissue.
For decades, scientists assumed that cancer was beyond the reach of the bodys natural defenses. But after decades of skepticism that the immune system could be trained to root out and eliminate these malignant cells, a new generation of drugs is proving otherwise.
The treatment consists of infusing antibodies that enhance the immune system to recognize cancer cells and attack it. Whats more, since the immune system has a built-in memory, it continues to go after cancer cells, so the response can be longer lasting and more complete.
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/01/111531/killing-cancer-through-immune-system
In other words, new drugs can trigger the immune system to fight certain cancers but the drugs are needed to do so precisely because the human body did not evolve any "Separate system" to do so.
Prove me (and UCSF) wrong.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)There's the part of the immune system that fights everything. We experience it as pain, swelling, pus and similar effects.
There's the part of the immune system that fights viruses and bacteria. Antibodies, macrophages, and some T cells.
There's the part of the immune system that fights cancer, mostly through other T cells and other white blood cells.
Their paper is talking about training the second system to fight cancer. That doesn't mean the third system does not exist, it means they're trying to turn more of the immune system against cancers.
GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)cancer. To me, evolving such a system would preclude the recent developments of external drugs and t cells therapies. Like if we had evolved the ability see in only infrared light then no one could sell us NightVision goggles because our body already has the ability. Are you saying the body came close but needs help? A link might be helpful.
T Cell therapy:
http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/cancer-center/t-cell-therapy-ctl019#.VKcICHtcBHA
There is a whole new theory of cancer which fascinates me:
...
Davies teamed up with Charley Lineweaver, an astrobiologist at The Australian National University in Canberra, and Mark Vincent, an oncologist at the London Health Sciences Center in Ontario. Together they have come up with an atavistic model positing cancer is the reexpression of an ancient preprogrammed trait that has been lying dormant. In a new paper, which appeared in BioEssays in September, they argue that because cancer appears in many animals and plants, as well as humans, then it must have evolved hundreds of millions of years ago when we shared a common single-celled ancestor. At that time, cells benefited from immortality, or the ability to proliferate unchecked, as cancer does. When complex multicellular organisms developed, however, immortality was outsourced to the eggs and sperm, Davies says, and somatic cells (those not involved in reproduction) no longer needed this function.
The teams hypothesis is that when faced with an environmental threat to the health of a cellradiation, say, or a lifestyle factorcells can revert to a preprogrammed safe mode. In so doing, the cells jettison higher functionality and switch their dormant ability to proliferate back on in a misguided attempt to survive. Cancer is a fail-safe, Davies remarks. Once the subroutine is triggered, it implements its program ruthlessly.
Speaking at a medical engineering conference held at Imperial College London, on September 11, Davies outlined a set of therapies for cancer based on this atavistic model. Rather than simply attacking cancers ability to reproduce, or cancers strength, as Davies terms it, the model exposes cancers Achilles heel. For instance, if the theory is correct, then cancer evolved at a time when Earths environment was more acidic and contained less oxygen. So the team predicts that treating patients with high levels of oxygen and reducing sugar in their diet, to lower acidity, will strain the cancer and cause tumors to shrink.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-cancer-evolve-to-protect-us/
jeff47
(26,549 posts)There's pretty good evidence that we actually get abnormal cells frequently. That third system is responsible for destroying those abnormal cells, and the vast majority of the time the cells are destroyed before anything interesting happens.
But the third system can not "ramp up" like the second. When we catch a cold, that second system goes from 'idle" to making tons of antibodies and cytotoxic T cells and so on - most of the stuff coming out of your nose during a cold is due to the actions of that 2nd system.
But because the third system can not "ramp up" in the same way, it's possible for the abnormal cells to grow into a tumor that the third system can not handle. That is the condition we label "cancer".
What makes these drugs interesting is they can use that 2nd system's ability to massively attack, but against tumors that the 3rd system can't handle.
PADemD
(4,482 posts)Occupation: Workers exposed to elevated amounts of carcinogens in the workplace are more at risk. This includes the rubber, chemical, and leather industries, along with hairdressers, machinists, metal workers, printers, painters, textile workers and truck drivers.
https://www.cornellurology.com/clinical-conditions/bladder-cancer/causes-of-bladder-cancer/
joshcryer
(62,265 posts)Sounds about right.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Jamastiene
(38,187 posts)I get sick of so much of it. They swear up and down that many ailments are some moral failing on the part of the patient.
My grandfather died of lung cancer and never smoked a day in his life nor did he live with anyone who smoked. My grandmother died of heart disease and ate nothing but the healthiest foods. Her cholesterol stayed sky high even after going vegetarian and eating only things with 0mg of cholesterol. My mother and I both have the same sky high cholesterol. Depression runs in our family too. Aneurysms are common in my family too.
My cousin died over the holidays from a headache that turned out to be an aneurysm. The doctors gave her fucking Ibuprofen, fussed at her for "triggering" her migraine by doing something "wrong" and unhealthy, and sent her home. She felt overly dizzy and sick on the way home and called the doctor and home. She said she was going back to the doctor to see if he could find out where that was coming from. She was on her way right back to the same doctor who just sent her home with Ibuprofen. On the way, she pulled off onto the side of the road, laid her head on the steering wheel and died. She didn't want to hurt anyone else. So, she pulled off onto the side of the road to die. Very fucking sad to lose a cousin this way, especially after the doctor didn't take her headache seriously enough to bother to follow up and find out before sending her to her death.
My entire family is full of health problems and it is not anything to do with "lifestyle" or diet. I asked my grandmother and my mother why we all had the same ailments if we all ate different diets and lived to varying degrees of healthy "lifestyles." My family is living proof that these ailments are not due to what we eat or how we live. Both my mother and my grandmother told me we shit in our blood. They were right.
I'm sick of doctors claiming physical ailments are always the fault of the patient. Sometimes, we just got shit in our blood and shit for luck. They need to quit making everything into a moral issue, as if our sins are causing diseases. It's fucking ridiculous. Blaming people for getting diseases is like some kind of fucked up religious dogma in our health care system and needs to stop.
Like those of us who live it say, cancer is something you get if you are unlucky as hell. It runs in families and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. You can never smoke and get lung cancer. You can eat only the healthiest zero cholesterol foods and have sky high cholesterol. You can eat only heart healthy foods and get heart disease. You can be as big as the side of a house (that's one thing that does not run in my family, but I know people who starve and are overweight and picked on) and not eat as much as even a child. It is going to turn out that most ailments are in the genes and we've been lambasted by doctors for ages about being so sinful in the way we live, when the truth is, it's shitty luck and shit in our blood (so to speak) that is causing most of this shit.