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Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

nature.com

251–260 of 280 posts

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice to have this information to see if any trends are discovered (all of this is theoretical, I question whether measuring excreted compounds rather than stores is is relevant but that’s a separate point) however it is unclear what value this information will provide and seems unlikely it will generate anything actionable. With that in mind, it’s hard to justify the colossal costs that would be involved…

Hmm, you could use that argument to dissuade all of scientific research. Science is zero sum, if we devote resources to it then you are taking them from someone else! But at the end of the day we all know there are significant potential benefits to this type of testing. Not only that, more demand can increase jobs & labs in the first place. Just because the system is dysfunctional is not a good argument for ceasing p…

> But at the end of the day we all know there are significant potential benefits to this type of testing. Not only that, more demand can increase jobs & labs in the first place.

But at the end of the day we all know there are significant potential benefits to [testing cars every year]. Not only that, more demand can increase jobs [in testing centres] in the first place.

The question isn’t whether there are benefits. It’s whether the benefits exceed the costs. You need to actually measure those to find out. You can’t just assume it. Jobs in testing centres and labs are not a benefit. If they are doing useless work they don’t just cost money. They cost the potential output from the jobs those people could have done instead. The TSA doesn’t just massively inconvenience millions every year to almost zero benefit. It also wastes the labor of tens of thousands of people who could have done something better and more useful with their lives.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#252

I feel like there has been a great increase in mental health issues: anxiety, depression, etc., especially among youth. I don’t recall these being major issues from when I was a youth in the late 80s and early 90s. I’m told that I’m wrong and people just didn’t talk about it so I wasn’t aware of it. But even amongst close family members and friends it wasn’t a thing. Now, I’ve seen some claim it is the post 9/11 worl…

1. Toxic social media

2. Toxic mass media

3. Devisive, polarizing politicians

4. Being constantly threatened with nuclear death from a madman half a world away

Humans have to be able to visualize a better tomorrow to be propelled toward it. Do you see a better tomorrow? Maybe people are depressed and anxious because deep down, in the recesses of our collective consciousness, we already know how all of this ends.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a quick glance, a lot of the intersectional feminist/activist modes of thought seem to be the polar opposites of what eg. cognitive behavioral therapy What a non sequitur. Why would feminism and stoicism have any incompatibilities?

I literally gave one example in the post you quoted. The intersectional types are vehemently against owning your emotional responses in the way stoicism advocates, and instead actively encourage finding more and more ever more minute things that might be rationalized to be a slight against themselves. On a deeper level, stoicism acknowledges and is built on the idea that not everything in the world is changeable, whi…

Stoicism makes no sense in that case? How can you own your emotions if you are unchangeable? A stoic would consider the world as perfect as it is if it is unchangeable. Everyone is a stoic in that case, including the intersectionist types

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#254

Wouldn't it be awful if unbridled capitalism turns out to be mankind's Great Filter? We'll be licky to become a Type I civilization after poisoning ourselves and the environment through exposure to chemicals and conditions we do not fully comprehend in return of some convenience, cheaper goods and making some a little richer.

Pollution is bad. Pollution occurs in non-capitalist societies too. It's often much worse. Chernobyl-levels of incompetent and indifference towards environmental protection. Non-capitalist societies also do things like concentration camps and genocides and world wars and famines which don't seem to emerge as frequently in capitalist societies. Don't blame capitalism.

That doesnt mean you can't blame capitalism. Capitalism rewards pollution, and that is a bad thing, even if a political/economic system built on nuking the planet every 5 minutes is also bad for different reasons

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#255
post #8

I say this as often as I can. We have a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer with ~83% efficacy. Following the "bread-crumbs" seems like a good strategy to me. We have this little beasty in wild. Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1, but no vaccine. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/human-t-lym... We have correlation with cancer with other viruses. Hep C for example. How many more clues do we need to exp…

I used to think this and I don't think so anymore. Consider a company who develops the de-facto cure for a cancer. Let's say a course of normal treatment to remission cost $200,000. There's no reason this company wouldn't release the cure. They would simple charge * + for the drug. People would pay almost any amount for such a cure. The company would have no problem padding it's bottom line sufficiently.

Devil's Advocate:

What if these companies did find a cure, and after running the numbers, determined it was less profitable? Wouldn't 'death by a thousand costs' be more profitable a one-time cure (or limited rounds)? Just because people would be willing to pay almost any amount does not mean they can pay almost any amount.

(Personally, I think they would release a cure if they could find one, but I have heard arguments as to why it would be less profitable, and I am curious about your opinions.

These companies are evil, but it's not entirely their faults. I think they are a manifestation of a sick society -- with each answer to our hopes and prayers the Monkey Paw curls.)

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#256
post #140

Anecdotally, I've found out in recent year about many women having serious thyroid issues. I'm sure more people being open about their health increases this, but the sheer frequency seems absurd. Whatever industrial chemicals we're ingesting need to be drastically controlled, and this poisoning needs to be branded so that the general population knows about it. I don't want years of my life to be an externality to a s…

My wife (early 30s) was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer and it's been absolutely shocking to hear how many other young women just in our social circle have also had it.

I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer 6 years ago. I spontaneously developed hypothyroidism after a tetanus shot, so my thyroid was under supervision for 5 years prior. The main thing I took away from research and from my doctor, was that the imaging has advanced so much because people want to see high quality ultra sounds of their babies that it's simply just diagnosed more. It's also very slow spreading and not uncommon for someone to have thyroid cancer when they die.

There's probably other environmental factors, radiation, diet, etc going on too.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#257
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to be born vaginally rather than c-section (might be too late for that!), avoid antibiotics unless you absolutely need them, polyphenol-rich whole food diet with diverse fruits and vegetables, lots of fibre and resistant starch and fermented foods. Buy organic if possible.

Since I was born via c-section I've tried to make up for the lack of my microbiome diversity by spending many years going down on a lot of different women and it seems to be working.

I suppose you are making fun of it. In case you need arguments to extend your joke: my friend and I were recommended pills made of colostrum of cow -- he took them.

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#259

Since when are we using so many chemicals in soap and deodorants? Since when is soap the mainstream thing for washing the body? I am just curious, I remember an ecotoxicologist detailing the interaction of deodorants with hormons, it was pretty scary.

> Since when is soap the mainstream thing for washing the body?

For soap, it sounds like maybe 3500 years ago? (Which is 1000 years after it was invented.) https://time.com/5831828/soap-origins/

Re: Is early-onset cancer an emerging global epidemic?

#260

> "However, the effects of individual exposures remain largely unknown. To study early-life exposures and their implications for multiple cancer types will require prospective cohort studies with dedicated biobanking and data collection technologies." What that means is analytical body-burden data collection should be a medical norm, for a variety of substances: polychlorinated biphenyls, triazine herbicides (atrazin…

Invasive biopsies in common medical screening? Yeah, that just isn't gonna happen. Nobody is going to test for any of those chemicals either due to the huge cost and questionable benefit.
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