More money is spent on preventing cancer in women in treatment, research, and preventive medicine. Google the history of the brca gene, research and tests around it. Its quite amazing.I hope all cancer research gets the pipeline it got.
[deleted]
Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
41–50 of 107 posts
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#42More money is spent on preventing cancer in women in treatment, research, and preventive medicine. Google the history of the brca gene, research and tests around it. Its quite amazing.I hope all cancer research gets the pipeline it got.
The breast cancer movement was started because at the time, male-only cancers (such as prostate and testicular cancers) were getting far more funding and research, while breast cancer was essentially being ignored despite being at least an order of magnitude more common. That it's more common has probably made it easier to do research on once it gained sufficient visibility and funding.
Breast cancer was not an order of magnitude more common than prostate cancer:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21332/full#c...
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#43Does anyone know how the X-inactivation thing works with the popular explanation for why women are less likely to be color-blind than men (ie: They have two copies of the gene for sensitivity to light of that wavelength, so both copies must be mutated in order to be insensitive)?
I believe it is exactly the mechanism described in the article: X-inactivation is incomplete. Some of the genes on the "inactivated" chromosome remain active.
What is new in this article is that they connected specific genes known to be active, to genes relevant for cancer. In other words, the theory was that the remaining-active genes helped avoid cancer, color-blindness, etc., and the article provides strong evidence supporting that in the area of cancer, the genes are the right ones.
Wikipedia suggests there are other theories too, like inactivating picking the "best" of the two options non-randomly, and the mosaic effect - it isn't the same X-chromosome inactivated everywhere, so e.g. some retinal cells might have one X and others the other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-inactivation#Selection_of_on...
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#44Does anyone know how the X-inactivation thing works with the popular explanation for why women are less likely to be color-blind than men (ie: They have two copies of the gene for sensitivity to light of that wavelength, so both copies must be mutated in order to be insensitive)?
According to this (and contrary to the article?), X-inactivation is randomized between cells, so women carriers of the color blindness mutation have half the number of correctly functioning cone cells.
http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/41447/colorblindn...
This is apparently sufficient for basically normal color vision.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#45Because men receive worse medical treatment. Just compare how prostate and breast cancer are promoted. It also corresponds with other statistics like life expectancy, medical expenses, disposable income...
On the flip side, studies have shown that women are less likely to be taken seriously when bringing a medical concern or complaint to a doctor. Which might suggest that women are under-diagnosed compared to men.
However personal experience tells me women are more likely to go to the doctor in the first place whereas men have more of a "it'll fix itself" attitude
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#46Because men receive worse medical treatment. Just compare how prostate and breast cancer are promoted. It also corresponds with other statistics like life expectancy, medical expenses, disposable income...
>Because men receive worse medical treatment. What about an alternative... Men are less likely to seek medical treatment?
It does not contradict my statement. If they are less likely to seek medical treatment, they receive worse medical treatment (or no treatment at all).
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#47Hypothesis: it's socially more acceptable for men to not care for their body as much as women do, eat worse, drink more soda and beer, etc. leading overall to more sugar(y) foods and more inflammation?
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#48They have more iron in their bodies.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#49So is the second X chromosome in women supposed to be an exact copy of the first or do they differ? That's fascinating to me all by itself, and more so that some genes in the dupe can reinforce the first even though the rest of the chromosome is suppressed. EDIT: Ah, wikipedia explains that the two X chromosomes in a standard-issue woman come from the mother and paternal grandmother, and then ... "Early in embryonic…
> It seems to me that it can only accumulate errors and mutations.
Except some of those mutations can be useful – some deadly, but some could be selected for as one's environment/niche shifts. That's evolution and selection in a nutshell. Not all mutations are bad and not all bad mutations are always bad.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#50Because men receive worse medical treatment. Just compare how prostate and breast cancer are promoted. It also corresponds with other statistics like life expectancy, medical expenses, disposable income...
Too bad you didn't read the article! The work the scientists did led to much more interesting breakthroughs that that. I learned several new things (x-inactivation and the "EXITS" exceptions to the phenomenon).
I read the article, it has interesting findings, but it ignores some other issues.