This is a possibility that as much of a third of the population is walking around with some form of thyroid cancer. They found this out by conducting autopsies and finding that 36 out of a 100 bodies had some form of thyroid cancer.
Bob gets a hangnail. Sixty years later, he gets hit by a bus. The hangnail didn’t kill him, but the bus did. Since the hangnail death hadn’t happened yet, it’s accurate to say that something else killed him first.
Mary gets a hangnail. It ends up getting infected, leading eventually to sepsis. She dies of her hangnail.
Frank gets a hangnail. It gets infected and leads to sepsis, but the ambulance rushing him to the hospital is too careless, and goes over a cliff, killing all on board. Something else killed Frank before his hangnail could.
Now, Bob’s situation is far, far more common than Mary’s or Frank’s, but all are possible.
Bayesian probability. If you are killed by something and you are not killed by something other than a hangnail, there’s a 100% chance you’ve been killed by a hangnail.
Does this hypothesis require that, first, you did in fact have a hangnail?
No. But it does require that you do eventually die from something or another.
My late wife’s oncologist told us that EVERYONE will get cancer, eventually. Unless they die of something else first. This sounds kind of tautologous, but what’s he’s saying is, unlike most diseases, cancer is, in the long term, an unavoidable result of normal biological processes. With our cells dividing all the time, and a small risk of an error in each division, given enough time a “really bad” error will happen, and a cell will end up malignant.
–Mark
The heat death of the universe might happen first.
Yes, cancer is a disease everyone will eventually get if something else doesn’t kill them first. Heart disease is something that will eventually kill everyone if something else doesn’t kill them first. The heat death of the universe will eventually kill everyone who doesn’t die from something else first. Or more simply put, something will eventually kill you if something else doesn’t kill you first.
A more meaningful statement would be something like “By age X, everyone who is still alive will have contracted some form of cancer”, with a suitable value for X.
I feel very stupid asking this, and don’t mean to play with words, but: “a cancer cell” or “a [insert type/location of cell”] which has gone haywire by cancer/is cancerous (cancerized, as it were)?
I know it’s been adressed before that it’s highly unlikely and more than if there wasn’t metastasis, but not why. Your neighbor doesn’t even have only esophageal cancer any more. By now it wouldn’t be one type of cancer that needs to recede, it’s several. Think of it as a fire with only one focus vs one with many. Depending on how the metastasis has gone, it’s even fires with different types of fuel.
Right, if you’re old enough and it small enough they often will say to just monitor it.
Thyroid cancer or thyroid tumors? It’s not the same.
Yes. You can talk about a single cancer cell.
I can’t actually google this right now, this is all IIRC:
Tumors are categorized into 4 grades; 1 to 4. From least to most “aggressive”. Any grade of tumor can potentially kill you if it’s in the wrong place, but grade 4 are much more likely to be fatal than grade 1.
I think technically cancer is only grades 3 and 4.
So I was basically saying while tumors can shrink and disappear, it’s much less common for cancer.
There was a Swiss doctor in the 60s who got people with advanced, untreatable cancer climbing mountains, etc. The idea was to stimulate their immune systems to deal with the cancer. Lilian Board, a British athlete with stomach cancer, was treated by him after a newspaper raised the funds for her treatment. She died. He claimed a 5% cure rate.
What the poster may have been referring to is occult papillary thyroid carcinoma/microcarcinoma, which has been found in carefully studied thyroids from autopsy cases. The studies I’ve seen cite a low percentage of occult papillary carcinomas (36% sounds extraordinarily high, and may include benign neoplasms like adenomas as well).
Occult (not having demonstrated clinical significance) prostate carcinomas are apparently much more common. Unfortunately we don’t have reliable ways of determining which will never metastasize and which are a clinical threat (higher grade tumors are considered more dangerous).
Speaking of grade (a morphologic measurement designed to show which tumors are nastiest looking microscopically and thus likely to behave badly), it’s calculated differently for different tumors, and doesn’t always correlate well with clinical outcome. Much more important is stage of a tumor - which describes extent of local spread and metastasis.
Thanks as always for your input, Dr.s Qadcop and Jackmanii.
And Martin Hyde - I actually have a mole that I have had for years, but has begun growing and itching in the past few months. Based on what you posted - I think I will call the doctor and have it looked at.
Thanks to all. Dopers are good.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t think it is that clear cut. I had a discussion about this with my specialist and it is not so much that it will develop slowly. It is that there is a lot of difficulty in discerning what is not aggressive and what is a aggressive. A lot of men will die with prostate cancer but not from prostate cancer.
As an expert, he said he would not have a clue which way he would jump if he was diagnosed. I would add that this discussion was about ten years ago so it is possible/ probable that a definitive diagnosis can now be made.
This is correct, though rare (at least, rarely documented).
The default putative mechanism is an immunological defense which is somehow triggered by the rogue cells, either b/c the cancer morphed, or b/c the immune system caught up to it. As Karl Gauss notes above, melanoma and renal cell are often cited as examples. It is not the case that all cancers have similar rates of reported spontaneous resolution.
While externally-manipulated immunologic approaches have been shown to affect cancers, the particulars of how innate defenses might cure a cancer are not worked out.
Did Mrs Calament ever get cancer? Jeanne Calment - Wikipedia