Also, isn’t melanoma a metastatic type of cancer? In other words, cancer cells travel to other parts of the body from your sun-caused melanoma, and set up shop as new tumors.
So back in the day, someone may have had a melanoma and thought it was just a weird dark spot, and turned around and died from “consumption” or some other vague-ass disease that was really metastatic skin cancer caused.
To elaborate on this, most new cases of melanoma are diagnosed after age 62, and a large majority (84%) after age 45. (Figures from here, under the “number of new cases and deaths” heading.)
While we can argue about estimates of post-childhood life expectancy, I think it’s safe to say that most pre-industrial farmers did not live past 62.
I believe I’m getting the picture. It looks like a combination of factors:
*Just as a general FYI, because I find it very interesting: While it’s true that lifespans were shorter before modern medicine (obviously), life expectancy is a fairly flawed metric for measuring the historically average life span, as it includes infant and child mortality, and most people who died young died really young. You see the numbers quoting the average medieval life expectancy as 30 or so, but if you made it into your 20s you were statistically likely to live another forty years or so. In medieval times, those who were lucky enough to make it to adulthood generally made it to their sixties or so.
Today, skin cancer tends to happen late in life; we have no reason to believe it happened at an earlier age back then. The thing is, people get skin cancer after the childbearing age, so it doesn’t have much of an effect on subsequent generations.
You don’t have to go that far back and people worked in the sun 11 hours a day in the summer. My grandparents were out in the fields from 6AM until dark. My grandmother only came in to fix their lunch. They were share croppers up until their forties and then purchased a small piece of their own land to farm. They were both covered in age spots when I knew them. Tough leathery skin. A lot of obvious sun damage. But no skin cancer.
All the farmers and field hands worked like that. They had full clothing. But their arms and faces got the sun. Harvesting sugar cane with a machete is slow hot work.
I’ve seen older black field hands that were almost coal black. That’s what the sun did to their natural coloration when they tanned.
I recall reading that people who work in the elements all day (ie. construction) tend to not have a higher rate of skin cancer. The theory was that constant exposure to the sun wasn’t necessarily the culprit; rather, the trend to go from pasty to baked in 3.2 seconds is what’s causing this uptake in skin cancers.
Also, I suspect migration has something to do with it. White people are generally adapted to the level of sunlight that is typical of Europe. Starting in the 15th century, massive numbers of those people started heading toward areas much further south, such as Florida. Fun fact - look at a world map. If you’re from the US, you might be inclined to think that Europe is more or less directly east. Not quite. Miami is as far south as Mauritania. The extreme southern parts of the Iberian peninsula line up fairly nicely with Ocean City, Maryland, with Lisbon coming up near the Jersey Shore. The Czech Republic, which fits nicely into the image of a temperate European country with all-around boring weather, is actually at the same latitude as Newfoundland! The Highlands of Scotland line up with northern Labrador and general Canadian “who the hell lives there?” frozen backcountry. Yes, there’s a massive climate difference - but that’s due to wind currents, not sunlight.
The cause are the sunblock creams
Additionally, there are many medications and topicals that increase the risk of sun damage that didn’t exist back then.
Note not only was there a recent column there was also a recent thread in Comments.
Shared points:
Less old age meant less cancer. And while indeed life expectancy of 35 includes bunches of childhood death skewing it down, if one survived into adulthood you still did not commonly live into your 70s or 80s, more like 45 to 50 as normative. That link is for the 13th century. For the 17th “of those who made it to age 21, 8 percent would make it to age 60.” Living into the age when melanoma would typically present (60s and beyond) was uncommon then and is common now.
Migration patterns such that people who are evolutionarily better adapted for low UV environs (and at higher skin cancer risk in a higher irradiance environment) are now living in higher UV locations.
More commonly currently having intense intermittent exposure (especially with sunburns) which seems to be the biggest risk factor for melanoma. Lower level regular exposure is not as highly associated and may at some not well determined ideal dose for skin type even be somewhat protective.
No not caused by sunblock creams. More sunscreen used regularly decreased skin cancer rates in this randomized prospective study.
Best point in this thread not made there is bump’s - death from melanoma then would be much less likely to have been recognized as such.
I was thinking that too.
Others are playing Dueling Anecdotes, so here goes:
My lilly-white sharecropper grandparents, great aunts, and great uncles are having all kinds of weird growths sliced off of their skin by concerned doctors. While I haven’t accessed complete medical records for any of them, I’ve heard them discuss “skin cancer” pretty frequently.
Since they’re either still living or have died of something else entirely, I’m guessing they had harmless-if-removed-promptly basal or squamous cell carcinomas.
I read this as meaning that sunblock causes skin cancer.
I’m no fan of conspiracy-theory accusations against ‘Big Pharma’ as they’re usually ignorant and knee-jerk.
But I think I remember research from a few years ago finding a tentative possible link - where certain sunblock chemicals, ‘activated’ in the lower skin layers by sunlight might have a carcinogenic effect - is there any evidence for this out there?
Here’s one page.
I’m sure we could find a myriad of pages on the internet affirming anything. And even if we used each page for or against as a vote and got a lopsided result for either “yes” or “no”, we would still not be certain.
As a member of the public, as a citizen of this planet (I was born here), I regret to have found out that I am uniformed about almost everything and can be made to fall victim to others’ opinions if they appear in very popular media outlets or its opposite.
At the end of the day (that’s an idiom, not to be taken literally) these are all personal decisions.
Not much to add except I was listening to a Doctor radio show the other day and a fellow called in with some hair brained conspiracy about how we actually do have a cure for cancer but it is being supressed (I assume by whoever you want to pin the conspiracy on).
The caller cited how there is so much more cancer now than back in the 1800s (not sure how he knew this). The doc stated that there is more cancer now because pretty much everything else that you could have died of in 1850 - like scraping your knee - has been figured out and cancer is one of the last things left that can kill you.
IANAD but doesn’t skin cancer typically show up in later life? If you die at 35 from Typhoid, you aren’t going to get skin cancer when you’re 68 like my old man.
I think that applies here.
IMHO, the unidentified person who wrote that article is a dingbat.
After emoting about how the need to protect one’s skin from excessive sun exposure is “alarmist drivel”, he/she goes on to insinuate that cancer organizations are paid off by drug companies to suppress information about sunscreens supposedly causing cancer. Dontcha know, the FDA is in on it too:
"The FDA are now sitting on a number of studies suggesting that when retinyl palmitate is applied to the skin and exposed to sunlight it may become increase toxicity and carcinogenic reaction. "
Retinyl palmitate is the form of vitamin A stored by the skin. Hype about it allegedly contributing to cancer largely stems from a 10-year-old mouse study. This article provides non-hysterical, non-conspiracy theory-related information:
The canceractive.com article is loaded with other horse manure, including the claim that it is “extremely clear” that melanoma is driven by estrogen. In fact, it is anything but clear (for example, the antiestrogenic drug tamoxifen has not been found effective against melanoma).
The site is full of other nonsensical woo, providing bad advice and misinformation to cancer patients in general. For example, they claim “it is important to understand too that cancer is a disease a weakening of the whole body it merely manifests itself in a certain area. For example, in cancer patients a blood sample usually shows signs of lowered oxygen (cancer cells thrive when oxygen levels fall).”
Patients are advised to (among other things) “clean up” their livers, consider Gerson therapy (quackery in its purest form) and waste time with other garbage.
Keeps them from doing anything really destructive like forgetting to vaccinate their kids, though.