So when the “1 in 2 of us will get cancer” statistic comes up on TV, is it right that us and the person we’re sitting with are wondering who will get it?
That doesn’t seem to make sense to me, but at the same time I can’t explain it.
So does “1 in 2”, “1 in 10” etc mean “2 people sat on a couch, 1 of you is getting cancer”, “look at 10 people in the street and 1 will get cancer”?
EDIT: cheers everyone for your explanations! Colour me informed.
In: Biology
Cancer is inevitable. Eventually, if you were to live long enough and avoid all other forms of death, you would get cancer, and if that didn’t kill you you’d keep on getting more cancer until you eventually did. Cancer happens when cells start to break, basically. More and more systems stop working properly as a result of accumulated mutations until they’re growing into tumours. So, when someone says 1 in 2 people will get cancer, what that really means is that 1 in 2 people will successfully avoid dying before they get cancer.
Also, no, 1 in 2 doesn’t literally mean that one of you and the person next to you will get cancer. It just means that of the population as a whole, 50% will get cancer. This is influenced by a lot of things, but will mean that some people will get cancer more than others. If you were to go into a room full of raging alcoholics, the cancer rate in there would probably be quite a lot higher than 50%, whereas if you go into a room full of health freaks (but the kind who actually know what they’re doing), the rate would be quite a lot lower than 50%.
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