Cancer has climbed the list of killers in the industrialized world fairly dramatically in the last century. Have there been analyses of to what extent this is because we live longer and die less frequently of other illnesses (vs. a rise in cancer rates owing to pollution, diet etc.)?
In other words, is cancer a near-inevitability that we are now surviving long enough to encounter in large number? Or are the rises in cancer rates purely from environmental factors? Somewhere in between? Are we doing analyses of these numbers with controls, and if so what are they?
For the most part, yes, people are mostly dying of cancer because there are fewer things around to kill us. Rates of death for things like Tuberculosis, for example, have plunged form 194 per 10,000 in 1900 to 2.6 per 10,000 today. Pneumonia followed a similar path. [a href = “lcolby.com is for sale”]source[/a]
When you look to find out whether the cancer rate is increasing, you have to adjust for age. After all, Age is the single greatest risk factor when it comes to getting cancer. Looking at the tables on [a href="Disclaimer - Electronic Collection] this page[/a] we see that the rates for most cancers have mostly held steady except for the huge increase of lung cancer (due to smoking) and the persistant decrease in colorectral and stomach cancers. I once found a chart that tracked cancer rates back to 1900, and the trends have been pretty consistent. Of course now I can’t locate the damn thing.
So, your odds of getting cancer are no greater today than 100 years ago (assuming you don’t smoke). On the other hand, now that we’re living longer, you have a 27% chance of dying from cancer someday. Enjoy!
I think it is more of a function that we aren’t dying off from other diseases so the ‘later’ in life’ diseases like cancer, hypertension and the like are becoming more prevalent…but then again everybody is born terminal, now instead of dying at 13 to scarlet fever, or at 21 of childbed fever you die at 50 of cancer
In addition to what was said above, early detection may play a small role in the increase in cancer rates (not necessarily cancer mortaliy rates, but the number of people who are being diagnosed with cancer).
For instance, PSA test can detect prostate cancer at a very early stage, creating an artificial rise in incidence rates: http://www.nih.gov./news/pr/nov97/nci-21.htm.
You might think that the cancer would progress in these men anyway and be detected later on, but maybe not–many cancers may not ever become clinically significant, and the man would be more likely to die with prostate cancer rather than from, there’s no way really of knowing.
This is likely only a small effect and only in certain types of cancers.
As has been said longer life spans mean more cancer. I read a study in which stated that if a man lives long enough his probablity of getting prostate cancer approches 1 (sorry no cite).
Cancer can be detected today more easily than before and successful treatment can be achieved. If an senior citizen died of cancer, he or she would likely to have died of “natural causes”.
Getting it, yes, but not dying of it. Almost all men who get old enough do get it, but die with prostate cancer, not of it. It’s almost always extremely slow growing.
And cancer is likely to continue to be a problem disease for humans for quite some time.
Evolution helps the human race change to fight off diseases, but not ones that occur after the prime child-producing age (like cancer).
Thus for most of the infections & diseases that affect us, our bodies have some built-in systems to fight them (like our white blood cells). Much of our medical accomplishments have been the development of drugs & treatments that assist these systems so our bodies can heal themselves.
Our bodies seem to be much less attuned to fighting off diseases like cancer, which generally occur after child-producing ages. So we’re likely to have a harder time developing effective treatments for such diseases. We kind of have to do it on our own, rather than just helping our bodies built-in defenses.
