Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

harvardmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 107 posts

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#71

Post by EdSharkey »

godmodus wrote: post #56
EdSharkey wrote: post #38

So 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…

Which is why human engage in mate selection and are great at multiplying. Plus innate abity to advance technology. We'll engineer ourselves to survive. Or nuke everything, whichever comes first. Heh. Edit: not to knock off the downvotes, if they're due, they're due. But may I enquire as to why I am being downvoted?

I didn't downvote you because you replied to me, and apparently I can't.

In my opinion, you didn't add much to the conversation and then with that last crack you did a snarky mic drop where you totally blew it.

I like to ask questions, perhaps with a careful dash of snark if I think I can flash out with some wit, and keep the conversation going.

For example, I might reply to you,

> Which is why human engage in mate selection and are great at multiplying.

Are we really selecting mates based on any useful criteria? It seems random to me, rarely based chiefly on reproductive fitness.

... and then someone smart chimes in with a technocratic article on how we DO (for the most part) select based on X number of traits that increase the survivability of our offspring - and we roll on for a bit more and I learn new things.

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#72

Post by amyjess »

EdSharkey wrote: post #38

So 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…

> Being a male, I'm troubled by the fitness of the Y-chromosome over the generations. It seems to me that it can only accumulate errors and mutations.

One possible safety hatch that comes to mind is that it's possible for XX males to exist. There's only one gene on the Y chromosome which has anything to do with male development, the SRY gene, which causes the proto-gonads to develop into testes (all male development following that is the result of the testes producing androgens). During meiosis, it's possible for the SRY gene to break off of the Y chromosome on one sperm and make its way into the X chromosome on the other sperm. When this happens, it's called de la Chapelle syndrome [0].

So if the Y chromosome eventually becomes unusable, we might end up in a future where males are created by inducing de la Chapelle syndrome in vitro by splicing an SRY gene into the zygote.

The only problem is that males with de la Chapelle syndrome are sterile, but I'm sure that if we get to the level of technology where this kind of gene splicing is commonplace, we can come up with some kind of hack to get around it. It's been speculated for a while that eventually we'll develop the technology to make one egg fertilize another in vitro, resulting in a healthy XX zygote, so that's one way (though the eggs wouldn't come from people with de la Chapelle's... which means we wouldn't need to induce it in the first place... so female-only world it is).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#73

Post by incongruity »

EdSharkey wrote: post #62
incongruity wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, truly over the long haul, the fittest survive - helpful mutations account for all survival thus far. I just envy what I interpret as an intragenerational bolstering of genetic traits that females have, assuming the EXITS thing is truly what's going on. They don't have to wait a generation to perhaps select out the bad, they get to do it on the fly.

It's a conservative strategy -change from one generation to another will likely be moderated/averaged by the influence of the second X chromosome for female offspring. Alternatively, single copy governed traits (as in males) mean greater ability to adapt (at a higher mortality rate) and those successful remaining males can propagate their single X chromosome (new and improved, thank you) to their daughters. It's a cool pattern of balances, IMHO.

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#74

Post by Fomite »

wjnc wrote: post #32
rokosbasilisk wrote: post #20

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.

Any facts to back that up? The story I hear more often [1] is the other way around. More men in medical studies, more often male animals in studies etc. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1761670/

The lack of inclusion of women and minorities has historically been such a problem that it is now a term and condition of many awards from HHS:

"In addition, several OPDIVs have policies concerning the inclusion of women, minorities, and children as subjects in their grant-supported research. These policies, which implement Section 492B of the PHS Act, 42 U.S.C. 289 a-2, require that women and members of minority groups and their subpopulations be included in OPDIV-supported research projects involving human subjects, unless a clear and compelling rationale and justification establishes that inclusion is inappropriate with respect to the health of the subjects, the purpose of the research, or other circumstances. When these policies apply (as specified in the funding opportunity announcement), the applicant is required to address inclusion of these groups in the application narrative, and the applicant’s plans will be assessed as part of the objective (peer) review process. Failure to comply with this policy or to adequately address use of human subjects and animals may adversely affect the score for technical merit, which may result in the OPDIV not making an award."

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#75

Post by EdSharkey »

incongruity wrote: post #73
EdSharkey wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, truly over the long haul, the fittest survive - helpful mutations account for all survival thus far. I just envy what I interpret as an intragenerational bolstering of genetic traits that females have, assuming the EXITS thing is truly what's going on. They don't have to wait a generation to perhaps select out the bad, they get to do it on the fly.

It's a conservative strategy -change from one generation to another will likely be moderated/averaged by the influence of the second X chromosome for female offspring. Alternatively, single copy governed traits (as in males) mean greater ability to adapt (at a higher mortality rate) and those successful remaining males can propagate their single X chromosome (new and improved, thank you) to their daughters. It's a co…

Hmm. Are you saying that men's imputing of adaptations to their one X chromosome is somehow more concentrated/effectual than the adaptations a woman imputes to her 2 X chromosomes? What is the mechanism and how did you draw that conclusion? Because she only passes one along?

It seems to me that chiefly the non-suppressed X chromosome in females would see action by its workings and thus accumulate adaptations.

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#76

Post by QML »

sndean wrote: post #53
EdSharkey wrote: post #38

So 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…

> Being a male, I'm troubled by the fitness of the Y-chromosome over the generations. It seems to me that it can only accumulate errors and mutations. In fact, the Y-chromosome has completely disappeared in some species [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome#Future_evolution

Is it me, or does this seem like a biological version of the gamblers ruin problem?

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GamblersRuin.html

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#77

Post by loteck »

jankotek wrote: post #46
voidlogic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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).

Worse and less are two different things. One is a judgement of quality, the other a judgement of quantity.

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#78

Post by stagbeetle »

dnautics wrote: post #70

I immediately guessed that this would be the explanation before reading the article. An important corollary hypothesis (that would exclude things like androgen effects) would be to do a statistical analysis on XY-women and see if they have similar cancer rates as men.

That is, if they can round up a representative sample. If the lack of Swyer syndrome (XY-women) published works is telling of anything, it's that cases are very rare.

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#79

Post by ChickeNES »

da02 wrote: post #60
PepeGomez wrote: post #48

They have more iron in their bodies.

I agree. However, most of the info. I've read comes from "health journalist" Bill Sardi. Despite the sound ideas, he is still brushed off as a crack-pot. Nevertheless, I'm betting on the "over-mineralization" theory of aging. I doubt it will ever become accepted. People seem to like to think in terms of genetics (because that's what the "experts" talk about most of the time) and "hi-tech" dreams (e.g.nano-bots killin…

Bil Sardi is brushed off as a crackpot because he is a crackpot.

Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

#80

Post by stagbeetle »

gozur88 wrote: post #28
JPLeRouzic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Cancer should be more common in women, isn't?

The implication is womens' immune system is more trigger happy, which would make cancer in women less common.

My first thought was that the opposite was true. The immune system attacks healthy cells, increasing inflammation, thus stress. Thereby lowering the normal immune system and allowing cancer cells to flourish.

Unless you're talking about all-encompassing diseases (I can't think of any off the top of my head). Otherwise, I don't think Celiac/MS/Diabetes is fighting any cancers.

Post reply on HN