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Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#111

Post by darkr »

tejtm wrote: post #87
Sebb767 wrote: post #12

One thing which I always thought of, but which the article doesn't mention, is age. Especially older people seem more prone to cancer, so in my mind a lower life expectancy will naturally lead to a lower cancer rate, as people die before cancer "is able to get them". Or am I missing something?

Not a biologist, but been around them long enough. I been cultivating a theory that mammals strategy is more or less "go fast; break things". That is, asteroid or not, we were on track to out evolve everything that came before by extending and exploiting explosive cell growth. No animal converts matter & energy to body-mass faster than young mammals, the cold blooded do not stand a chance. The competition would get l…

> No animal converts matter & energy to body-mass faster than young mammals, the cold blooded do not stand a chance.

Feel like Argentinosaurus might have had something to say about that argument..

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#113

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

zackees wrote: post #64
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Studies of groups of people who received polio vaccine during 1955–1963 provide evidence of no increased cancer risk." [1] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25057632/

NIH is corrupt and often covers for big pharma which funds it. SV40 has consistently been found in tumors across the body: https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/67/17/8065.short

Correlation does not equal causation. A virus being found in a tumor doesn't mean it caused it.

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#114

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

nemo44x wrote: post #32
strken wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they control for age? A lot of the lower life expectancy was sky-high infant mortality, and if you made it to 10 in 1850 (hardly preindustrial, but preindustrial stats are harder to find) you could expect to live to 60 or so. Presumably you'd compare the cancer rates of your study's skeletons with the cancer rates of today's 60 year olds.

It’s amazing how precarious being born is. I think I read that about 200 years ago around 40% of people didn’t make it past 5 years old or something like that. Antibiotics have helped a lot in modern times, especially for mothers giving birth.

I personally would have 100% died at least once without antibiotics. Probably several times.

My top three favorite human accomplishments of all time are:

1. printing press 2. vaccines 3. antibiotics

And the order of the last two is debatable.

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#116

Post by Supermancho »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #61
zackees wrote: post #56

sv40 is a cancer causing virus that contaminated 1/3rd of all polio vaccines. From wikipedia: The discovery of SV40 revealed that between 1955 and 1963 around 90% of children and 60% of adults in the U.S. were inoculated with SV40-contaminated polio vaccines. Link to studies: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=sv40...

"Studies of groups of people who received polio vaccine during 1955–1963 provide evidence of no increased cancer risk." [1] [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25057632/

I think a quick google search has steered you wrong. I don't think this is a huge story (I've never heard of SV40 before reading this thread), but just a little deeper...reading the executive summary, the story seems less clear cut.

"The committee concludes that the biological evidence is moderate that SV40 exposure could lead to cancer in humans under natural conditions."

And there's more. SV40's probably also transformative (observed in both mammals and humans) and the vaccine has moderate evidence of causality.

Then there's the strange disappearance of the CDC page awhile back - http://www.laleva.org/eng/2013/07/cdc_disappears_page_linkin...

And the papers correlating the virus to cancer:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10472327/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16966607/

etc

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#118

Post by axguscbklp »

sharklazer wrote: post #9
newsclues wrote: post #2

Did the age of oil or age of nuclear power have more unintended consequences?

The age of glyphosate, an antibiotic that has been sprayed so much that it’s testable in the rain and in sources of groundwater at this point. The effects of long-term antibiotic exposure are up still being learned. But it clear means a gut biome disruption. Thanks Monsanto. Err... Bayer (same people who sold Heroin over the counter 100 years ago)

>Bayer (same people who sold Heroin over the counter 100 years ago)

You say that like selling heroin over the counter is a bad thing.

Re: Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?

#119

Post by CoryAlexMartin »

inglor_cz wrote: post #97
CoryAlexMartin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are our telomeres long enough to allow for the development of cancer, or is it necessary for the system to be overridden, thus allowing cells to replicate indefinitely? My layman's understanding was that benign moles were benign, and not cancerous, because the telomere system was functioning normally and limiting growth. Am I wrong?

The main thing that stops bad cells from proliferating isn't telomeres, but our own immune system. NK cells (natural killers) are very efficient in terminating everything suspicious with extreme prejudice, so to say. Successful cancer is the one that learns how to look innocently, at least to the immune cells patrolling the body. Successful immunological treatment (actually using mRNA vaccines, that is what Moderna a…

It never occurred to me that the immune system was involved in keeping cancer at bay, but that makes sense. Shows how lacking my biology knowledge is!
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