11–20 of 75 posts
According to Craig Venter, early detection is what we need to eliminate cancer: https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8?t=15m37s
For example, a lot of breast cancer screening has been highly controversial, because of either A) false positive diagnosis B) slowly growing cancers that are too aggressively treated. To properly assess the utility of a cancer screening technique, you need to look at specific long term metrics, such as mortality reduction, that can only be quantified using randomized controlled trials. On the other hand, there's many pitfalls for over treatment. Patients may die during surgery. Biopsy isn't a fun procedure to go through on the receiving end. There's a lot of emotional stress involved. Adverse reactions from chemotherapy/biological agents used to treat the disease. And all this is in the face of the fact that you may die from other causes such as a heart attack.
Certainly I share the optimism with many that we can develop breakthrough cancer screening techniques, but it's irresponsible to let it interfere with rational decision making based on proper studies.
One issue with this might be selection bias towards cancer. What is the baseline rate of finding these type of mutations in people that do not develop cancer? There are cells going bad all the time in the human body, but because of factors such as the immune system, they actually don't cause any problems.
One example of this kind of thing is prostate cancer. Prostate cancer used to be aggressively treated often with a lot of side effects such as not being able to control urine and sexual dysfunction. However, further research showed that a lot of these cancers either don't continue to progress or progress so slowly that the patient will die with the cancer rather than from the cancer, and so not doing anything is the best course of action.
Overall this is an exciting development, but it will take a lot more research to know what should be done with that information, and to avoid over-treating which has its own downsides.
> The findings, based on samples from more than 2,500 tumours ... Findings based on tumors sound like 20/20 hindsight! If your crystal ball tells you where in a body tumor will develop five years from now, then if you look at the cells there, you might see some subtle signs that you know are not false positives. Somehow, I don't think I'm holding my breath for new screening tests.
Lately I've been doing 7 day fasts two times a year mostly to reduce visceral fat and reduce my chance of type 2 diabetes. However a lot of science is pointing to it being a good way to reduce cancer risk. Nothing definitive, but it's nice to think I may be helping my body fight possible cancer too. Maybe I will catch some of these things early during these phases where the genes are present but the cancer hasn't beg…
Lately I've been doing 7 day fasts two times a year mostly to reduce visceral fat and reduce my chance of type 2 diabetes. However a lot of science is pointing to it being a good way to reduce cancer risk. Nothing definitive, but it's nice to think I may be helping my body fight possible cancer too. Maybe I will catch some of these things early during these phases where the genes are present but the cancer hasn't beg…
7 days fasting (electrolytes-only) gives me a week-long euphoria afterwards, but days 6-7 show some ugly symptoms of previous diseases, so persevering those is a bit tricky. It also leads to 10-12lb weight loss.
While it is certainly interesting to hear of new developments for cancer screening, it must be taken in with the proper context. I see a lot of people without medical or public health training fall into the trap of thinking that any sort of screening mechanism is a net positive, without taking into consideration the "costs". For example, a lot of breast cancer screening has been highly controversial, because of eithe…
> The findings, based on samples from more than 2,500 tumours ... Findings based on tumors sound like 20/20 hindsight! If your crystal ball tells you where in a body tumor will develop five years from now, then if you look at the cells there, you might see some subtle signs that you know are not false positives. Somehow, I don't think I'm holding my breath for new screening tests.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any sources for this? I'd like to learn more.
In a word? No. There have been a couple studies done that suggest vegetarian diets are modestly cancer protective (~10% lower incidence). There have also been some that link increased meat consumption with increased risk of cancer. It's absolutely not clear that eating meat causes cancer. Dietary habits change your cancer mortality risk and being a vegetarian probably correlates with something like a 1-4% decreased r…