1/2 of all people develop some form of cancer within their lifetime?

[FishmanGeertz]

Half of all people will develop some form of cancer within their lifetime?

I believe I read somewhere that roughly 1 in every 2 (half) of ALL people will develop some form of cancer within their lifetime. Those figures seem awfully high, can anyone with an advanced knowledge of medicine confirm or debunk this for me?

 

[Mech_Engineer]

You're going to have to post your source first, "I believe I read somewhere" isn't good enough.

 

[JaredJames]

According to the stats from the links below, it is 1 in 3 people will get it and 1 in 4 will die from it.

http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/incidence/risk/

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=915

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Maybe we are just better at detecting it or people are more open to talk about it. It really does seem over the last several years the number of people I know getting cancer is frightening.

 

[Evo]

Maybe we are just better at detecting it or people are more open to talk about it. It really does seem over the last several years the number of people I know getting cancer is frightening.

It's many things. Earlier detection, being able to keep the patient alive long enough to detect cancer. Not that long ago people would just "waste away", die of "unknown causes", before that, bad humours, evil, and all sorts of crazy things to explain an illness that couldn't always be seen.

More people seeing doctors for ailments results in more people being diagnosed

Also, people live longer so cancers that didn't have a chance to be caught are found now.

And when you read history, think of the high death rate for children and young adults. You hear things, like "they were always a sickly child", terms like "frail health", or they suddenly became sickly and didn't respond to treatment.

Now some cancers aren't discovered until the post mortem, back in the old days, it was illegal to do autopsies.

 

[FishmanGeertz]

100 years ago, about 1 in 50 people (2%) developed cancer. And someone under 30 years old developing cancer was almost unheard of. I'm assuming that it's because of all the carcinogenic chemicals which exist in the food chain. Pollution and increased ambient radiation from cell phones, radio towers, and other electronic devices might also have something to do with it.

Way back when food was grown and produced naturally, and wasn't sprayed with pesticides or injected with chemicals to increase it's shelf life, cancer was fairly uncommon. But today, it is absolutely everywhere, and it is getting worse! Even toddlers and infant children are getting it! Perhaps there has been some kind of mutation in the human gene pool?

 

[Pengwuino]

100 years ago, about 1 in 50 people (2%) developed cancer. And someone under 30 years old developing cancer was almost unheard of. I'm assuming that it's because of all the carcinogenic chemicals which exist in the food chain. Pollution and increased ambient radiation from cell phones, radio towers, and other electronic devices might also have something to do with it.

No, they don't (except for pollution). And did you even read what was posted before your post?

The life expectancy for people 100 years ago was 50 years old. How many people do you know under 50 who have had cancer? I can't name a SINGLE person. Bring that to today where the life expectancy is reaching 80 years old and I can probably name a dozen people who have had it or died from it.

Also, did they have MRIs in the 1910s? CT scans? How many types of cancer did they even know of back in the 1910s? How many diseases have we cured within the past 100 years that would be responsible for killing people long before they even had a chance to develop cancers? Remember, cancer isn't something that just randomly happens no matter what your age. As you get older, the chances of getting cancer increase. A kid dying of cancer is extraordinarily rare.

 

[FishmanGeertz]

No, they don't (except for pollution). And did you even read what was posted before your post?

The life expectancy for people 100 years ago was 50 years old. How many people do you know under 50 who have had cancer? I can't name a SINGLE person. Bring that to today where the life expectancy is reaching 80 years old and I can probably name a dozen people who have had it or died from it.

Also, did they have MRIs in the 1910s? CT scans? How many types of cancer did they even know of back in the 1910s? How many diseases have we cured within the past 100 years that would be responsible for killing people long before they even had a chance to develop cancers? Remember, cancer isn't something that just randomly happens no matter what your age. As you get older, the chances of getting cancer increase. A kid dying of cancer is extraordinarily rare.

The only diseases which have actually been outright cured in the past 100 years are polio and tuberculosis. I know only two people in my family who have died of cancer. My aunt died of ovarian cancer at 59 years old, and my uncle (not blood related) died of pancreatic cancer. My grandfather may have had the early stages of prostate cancer before he passed. But instead, he died of a heart attack a few years ago. My other uncle died in his sleep of a stroke very recently.

I believe that the main reason why cancer has never been cured is because there is simply too much money involved in treating it and selling cancer drugs. The medical and especially the pharmaceutical industry make hundreds of billions/trillions of dollars in yearly profits from treating cancer. If cancer was cured, the stock value, and profits of the giant pharmaceutical corporations would take a crashing nosedive. Oncologists would lose their careers, cancer foundations would cease to exist, medical research organizations would lose funding and government grants, and so forth.

If the above paragraph violates the forum rules or offends any of the moderators, just delete it and please don't issue me infraction points. I'm just giving an honest hypothesis. This forum is very useful to me and I don't want to be banned.

 

[JaredJames]

I believe that the main reason why cancer has never been cured is because there is simply too much money involved in treating it and selling cancer drugs. The medical and especially the pharmaceutical industry make hundreds of billions/trillions of dollars in yearly profits from treating cancer. If cancer was cured, the stock value, and profits of the giant pharmaceutical corporations would take a crashing nosedive. Oncologists would lose their careers, cancer foundations would cease to exist, medical research organizations would lose funding and government grants, and so forth.

Complete and utter crap. In fact, this is utter crack pottery. I find myself offended by this conspiracy rubbish.

Cancer rates increase because our ability to detect it gets better. In the earlier 1900's, people would get ill and die of unknown causes - there was no way of knowing it was cancer.

Cut the crap and conspiracy. Face reality.

If the above paragraph violates the forum rules or offends any of the moderators, just delete it and please don't issue me infraction points. I'm just giving an honest hypothesis. This forum is very useful to me and I don't want to be banned.

I suggest you stop with this nonsense then. Violate the rules, get an infraction. Personally I'd support one in this case. There are people banned for less.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The only diseases which have actually been outright cured in the past 100 years are polio and tuberculosis.

TB cured?? http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs104/en/index.html" is a major concern. Antibiotics have allowed us to provide cures for literally thousands of diseases, organisms evolve however and now we have to fight to keep resistant bacteria at bay.

I believe that the main reason why cancer has never been cured is because there is simply too much money involved in treating it and selling cancer drugs. The medical and especially the pharmaceutical industry make hundreds of billions/trillions of dollars in yearly profits from treating cancer. If cancer was cured, the stock value, and profits of the giant pharmaceutical corporations would take a crashing nosedive. Oncologists would lose their careers, cancer foundations would cease to exist, medical research organizations would lose funding and government grants, and so forth.

Absolute conspiracy theory based on no understanding of the pharmaceutical market at all. For a start you are assuming that all cancer researchers across the globe are unethical individuals. In addition any drugs company with a patent on a cure would quash every other companies efforts. I've bolded the word "cure" there because I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding on what a cure and a treatment are, there are hundreds of different potential treatments in various stages of clinical trial at the moment. All of them hope to decrease the lethality of cancer either through http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/574914_3".

There is no one magic cure for cancer because cancer cells are human cells. There will be no one drug that somehow targets/destroys cancer cells without damaging non cancerous cells. That's why treatments using better detection and targeting systems hope to improve cancer survival rates. One day getting cancer may be a minor inconvenience that involves nothing more than taking one treatment (with customised delivery/release systems based on your cancer genotype) with little side or no effects but that will be thanks to the combined efforts of hundreds of thousands of scientists world wide working in both the public and private sectors. To suggest that better cancer treatments are not being perused is grossly ignorant and hugely insulting to anyone working in the field.

If the above paragraph violates the forum rules or offends any of the moderators, just delete it and please don't issue me infraction points. I'm just giving an honest hypothesis. This forum is very useful to me and I don't want to be banned.

Perhaps instead of spouting your uninformed opinion from an armchair you should learn about a subject before commenting on it. This is not a hypothesis.

 

[DaveC426913]

Complete and utter crap. In fact, this is utter crack pottery. I find myself offended by this conspiracy rubbish.

Cancer rates increase because our ability to detect it gets better. In the earlier 1900's, people would get ill and die of unknown causes - there was no way of knowing it was cancer.

Cut the crap and conspiracy. Face reality.


I suggest you stop with this nonsense then. Violate the rules, get an infraction. Personally I'd support one in this case. There are people banned for less.

While certain conspiracies are banned from discussions, I am not sure that
a] having a view that is not light and sunny can be categorically labelled a conpiracy and then judged as such
b] crime and corruption is categorically a banned topic
c] someone could be infracted without a specific rule being broken.

I do know however, that people can be banned for abusive and accusative behaviour toward other members.

You may disagree, even strongly, but if you want the rules behind you, you should quote them.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

While certain conspiracies are banned from discussions, I am not sure that
a] having a view that is not light and sunny can be categorically labelled a conpiracy and then judged as such
b] crime and corruption is categorically a banned topic
c] someone could be infracted without a specific rule being broken.

With respect I agree with you on the points you raise however I do not think the opinion presented fits this description. It's one thing to express a view on the practices of pharmaceutical companies in a capitalist system and to discuss the nature of greed, so long as you use logical arguments and provide evidence where applicable. It is an entirely different (and massively erroneous) thing to propose that there is an effort to suppress cancer research by everyone in the industry for purposes of profit.

The aforementioned opinion in combination to the link to a conspiracy theory website should be all we need to know to label, judge and respond to this as a conspiracy.

 

[JaredJames]

I am not sure that
a] having a view that is not light and sunny can be categorically labelled a conpiracy and then judged as such

Why not read the link he just provided. Oh look, it's about a conspiracy to cover up and how there's a cure for cancer.

b] crime and corruption is categorically a banned topic

But supporting that there's a cure for cancer and that it's being suppressed is required.

c] someone could be infracted without a specific rule being broken.

You may disagree, even strongly, but if you want the rules behind you, you should quote them.

Claiming that we can cure cancer and the only reason we haven't is monetary and then not supporting it with a shred of evidence is valid here? Posting links to crackpot conspiracy sites promoting a book on a conspiracy is acceptable?

Regardless, I believe the mentors have discretion on their part. The rules do say conspiracies aren't allowed, so it's that for a start.

I do know however, that people can be banned for abusive and accusative behaviour toward other members.

Feel free to report my post. I don't see it as abusive, it is an accurate description of what was written - unless of course you feel it isn't complete crackpot and nonsense? Accusative, certainly. But then am I not allowed to accuse someone? Especially when it is supported by the posts.

Anyhow, as I said, report it if you don't like it.

 

[berkeman]

Moderator Note -- There has been some cleanup of this thread. Please avoid the conspiracy theory angle, and please keep the bickering out of the discussion. Thank you.

 

[thorium1010]

The only diseases which have actually been outright cured in the past 100 years are polio and tuberculosis.

This is factually incorrect, while it is true that polio has been eradicated from the developed world cases of polio still occur in india, pakistan and nigeria or kenya (not sure ).

Tuberculosis on the other hand though predominantly seen in developing countries has emerged in developed countries IN the setting of AIDS as drug resistant TB.

http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/statistics/TBTrends.htm"

 

[Astronuc]

How many people do you know under 50 who have had cancer? I can't name a SINGLE person. Bring that to today where the life expectancy is reaching 80 years old and I can probably name a dozen people who have had it or died from it.

Unfortunately, because my mom worked as a nurse, and my dad as a hospital chaplain, I know of too many people under 30 who had cancer, and too many who died.

http://childrenscancer.org/learning-center/understanding-childhood-cancer/index.html
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood

Ryan Leaf (35) is recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Ryan-Leaf-is-recovering-from-surgery-to-remove-a

My youngest brother died at 34 from leukemia, my dad (in his late 70s) had colon cancer, but survived difficulty. Another person close to me had breast cancer, and one oncologist indicated that the frequency of breast cancer seems to have increased from 1/20 to about 1/8 in the past 4 decades, but perhaps the detection was not as good 40 years ago.

Childhood obesity has been on the increase, and that population is likely to see a higher rates of some cancers.
http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/obesity/
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

 

[Janus]

. How many people do you know under 50 who have had cancer? I can't name a SINGLE person.

Including myself, off the top of my head, I can think of 4.

 

[FishmanGeertz]

Even if your cancer goes into remission, it most often returns years later to kill you. Chemotherapy/drugs/surgery doesn't always make the cancer permanently disappear, it just goes into "hiding" with a high probability of returning. And this happens more times than not.

If you have a pre-cancerous mole frozen off with liquid nitrogen, then the cancer is completely terminated before it has the chance to spread. Many years ago, my mother had a pre-cancerous growth (cervical cancer) frozen off, and it probably saved her life. But it is sometimes very difficult to catch cancers in their pre-stages.

With proper and extensive treatment, most cancers can be eliminated with a fairly high chance of survival. But it's things like pancreatic, brain, and bone cancer which are extremely deadly, and of which very few people survive.

 

[Evo]

Even if your cancer goes into remission, it most often returns years later to kill you. Chemotherapy/drugs/surgery doesn't always make the cancer permanently disappear, it just goes into "hiding" with a high probability of returning. And this happens more times than not.

If you have a pre-cancerous mole frozen off with liquid nitrogen, then the cancer is completely terminated before it has the chance to spread. Many years ago, my mother had a pre-cancerous growth (cervical cancer) frozen off, and it probably saved her life. But it is sometimes very difficult to catch cancers in their pre-stages.

With proper and extensive treatment, most cancers can be eliminated with a fairly high chance of survival. But it's things like pancreatic, brain, and bone cancer which are extremely deadly, and of which very few people survive.

And your point is what?

 

[FishmanGeertz]

And your point is what?

If cancer goes into remission, probably 75% of the time it returns years later to kill you.

 

[JaredJames]

If cancer goes into remission, probably 75% of the time it returns years later to kill you.

Once again, what is your point (and perhaps some stats to back that up)?

What does that have to do with your OP or previous posts?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Here's some stats, not sure how reliable they are. In the http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/incidence/risk/" .

 

[Evo]

But it's not as dire as it sounds, I'm trying to get better stats to explain that 1 in 2 means that by age 80 that might be possible. It certainly doesn't apply to all ages. For example people in their mid 20's do not have a 1 in 2 chance of being diagnosed with cancer.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

But it's not as dire as it sounds, I'm trying to get better stats to explain that 1 in 2 means that by age 80 that might be possible. It certainly doesn't apply to all ages. For example people in their mid 20's do not have a 1 in 2 chance of being diagnosed with cancer.

Oh yeah of course, its 1/2 over an entire life time. One of the links I gave has risk per cancer per age group I think

 

[bobze]

The people arguing that this number is increasing, need to take into consideration our ability to diagnose--Especially cancers that are "non-deadly".

For instance, basal cell carcinoma is the most common skin cancer (something around 90% of all skin cancer cases). And in the US, skin cancers are the most common form of cancer.

BCC isn't aggressive though and hardly ever metastasizes. So you don't get a lot of people dying from it, but it still contributes to those statistics.

Its interesting if you ever take a gross anatomy course or get the privilege to dissect a human body. Almost all of the elderly cadavers have some form of cancer you'll find during the course of the dissection---Even if that wasn't their cause of death. The cadaver I got to use had 2 large fibrous pleural tumors, though the cause of death was septicemia from bed sores acquired after a fall.

If you live long enough, cancer is inevitable.

Past reproductive age, selection can only have extremely minor impacts (if at all, though you could make the argument for a few things). As such, we (and the rest of life on earth) never evolved to "defend" against cancer for ever. That defense is only necessary prior to reproductive age.

 

[DaveC426913]

Frankly, I think the increasing rate of cancer is meaningless without considering our increasing lifespan.

We are curing lots of things, and so living longer. IMO, many cancers are kind of the final 'I can't hold it together any longer' of the body. We are bound to run up against a hard threshold of the body's ability to keep running as we systematically cure everything else.

 

[turbo]

Detection rates and increased awareness could indeed swell the numbers of reported cancer cases. One of my neighbors is going through recurrent bouts of skin-cancer, and another is being treated for prostate cancer. Neither lives farther than 3 homes from me.

I lost a dear friend (a ridiculously funny woman who used to perform in a Chicago improv group) to glioblastoma a few years ago, then lost another dear friend (biker-buddy) to cancer that riddled his body and spread to his liver. He was a Vietnam vet, and had been exposed to Agent Orange. Well over a decade back, I lost probably my closest friend at the time (former boss - head of the Technical department at my mill) to cancer. He came down with testicular cancer that went into remission with aggressive chemo, then re-emerged years later and went to his lungs and brain. My brother-in-law came down with adrenal cancer about a year after being sprayed with herbicide from the air while he was fishing. His uncle was sprayed, too, and died sooner - of cancer. Jim managed to survive the treatments, and he lived to see all his 4 kids graduate HS, but he never lived to see any of his grandchildren. The cancer re-emerged and went to his lungs and brain, at a minimum.

I wonder how many of these cases would have been accurately diagnosed even 50 years ago...

 

[Pengwuino]

Unfortunately, because my mom worked as a nurse, and my dad as a hospital chaplain, I know of too many people under 30 who had cancer, and too many who died.

I'm just looking at the statistics based on age. For every person you see die at a young age, I'm sure there are a lot of people who have died at a much older age. This is the discrepancy I'm pointing out in saying people back in the day rarely died of cancer without noting that people had a much shorter life expectancy.

 

[bobze]

Detection rates and increased awareness could indeed swell the numbers of reported cancer cases. One of my neighbors is going through recurrent bouts of skin-cancer, and another is being treated for prostate cancer. Neither lives farther than 3 homes from me.

I lost a dear friend (a ridiculously funny woman who used to perform in a Chicago improv group) to glioblastoma a few years ago, then lost another dear friend (biker-buddy) to cancer that riddled his body and spread to his liver. He was a Vietnam vet, and had been exposed to Agent Orange. Well over a decade back, I lost probably my closest friend at the time (former boss - head of the Technical department at my mill) to cancer. He came down with testicular cancer that went into remission with aggressive chemo, then re-emerged years later and went to his lungs and brain. My brother-in-law came down with adrenal cancer about a year after being sprayed with herbicide from the air while he was fishing. His uncle was sprayed, too, and died sooner - of cancer. Jim managed to survive the treatments, and he lived to see all his 4 kids graduate HS, but he never lived to see any of his grandchildren. The cancer re-emerged and went to his lungs and brain, at a minimum.

I wonder how many of these cases would have been accurately diagnosed even 50 years ago...

Probably not many. Cell biology 50 years ago was still in diapers. Genetics, which is what cancer is really about, hadn't been weened yet! And autopsies were pretty much done by gross visualization--With little cell biology involved.

Well okay, I guess 50 years ago was the 60's--So it wasn't that bad and all. Many feels like it was 2000 just yesterday Turn it back another decade and my appraisal is more accurate.

 

[bobze]

I'm just looking at the statistics based on age. For every person you see die at a young age, I'm sure there are a lot of people who have died at a much older age. This is the discrepancy I'm pointing out in saying people back in the day rarely died of cancer without noting that people had a much shorter life expectancy.

Right and again, we have better diagnostic capabilities as well.

Consider the most common childhood cancer in industrialized nations; leukemias and lymphomas. While scientists and physicians in the later part of the 19th century were able to recognize a trend in patients presenting with L/L symptoms had excessive white blood cells--No one really understood it.

Does anyone think that lots of children who died from L/L in the 19th or early 20th century were correctly marked down for cause of death?

Also you have to look at, with cancer in the young, the fact that the mortality rate of infectious diseases has dived so low for many of them. Whooping cough, Scarlet fever, diphtheria, TB etc, had extremely high mortality rates at various points in history. So sure, little bobby might have been on his way to have NHL at the age of 19, but the Scarlet got him first!