why does it seem as though cancer is becoming more and more common?
In: Biology
I think part of that may be because we just hear about cancer diagnosis a lot more because of social media. There are a lot of living with cancer and the treatment journey videos and stories posted on youtube and instagram, etc.
Deaths due to cancer have been declining quite a bit.
Diagnosis of cancer has increased, due to all sorts of factors from our shitty diets, obesity, simply living longer since cancer is basically just a side effect of existing.
Cancer itself is indeed becoming more common, but not in the way that you might expect.
First, there are new things out there that we have discovered cause all kinds of new cancers that didn’t exist before. Exposure to certain chemicals can cause cancer, and some of these chemicals didn’t exist before so cancer rates are rising among people that are exposed to these chemicals on a regular basis. This is common among people that work in specific fields. We didn’t really know these chemicals caused cancer because a lot of safety studies really only determine the short-term effects of exposure to new chemicals (i.e. are you going to die if you stand next to it for a few hours?) rather than the long-term effects of exposure (i.e. are you going to get cancer if you work with it for 30 years?).
Second, cancer diagnosis are increasing because we have new ways to detect certain types of cancer earlier than ever. This is a really good thing! While it increases the number of people that are diagnosed as having cancer and that statistic looks bad on paper, new detection methods mean that cancer is caught when it’s in its very early stages. This means that it can be treated much more effectively because it’s caught before it metastasizes, or spreads to other parts of the body.
If you look at the most important statistics, cancer deaths are dropping!!! We’re able to catch cancers a lot sooner, get people the proper treatment, and kill cancer a lot more effectively than we were previously able to. Regular checkups are a huge way that cancer is caught early, especially cancers that are easy to check for yourself! If you’re in an age range that is commonly associated with various types of cancer, go get checked or check yourself for unusual lumps or bumps associated with breast cancer to testicular cancer! There’s all kinds of great improvements to the screening processes for all kinds of cancer making the tests less invasive and easier to do!
Many of the disease and particularly heart attacks which used to kill people in their 40’s have been significantly reduced. More people are living long enough to get cancer.
I also think we’re not dying from other stuff like we used to. Cancer is the latest thing we haven’t figured out.
Because we’re curing other things.
Cancers (excluding Leukemia and lymphoma – both of which primarily are childhood diseases) are the result of a lifetime of your body making little mistakes when making new cells. One mistake won’t result in cancer – but enough will; and while your body can kill well over 99% of those mistake cells, every once in a while those rogue cells sneak out and cause cancer.
However, that all takes time – a lot of it. Adult cancers basically don’t show up until you are in your 40s; and the risk of them increase as you get older. For most of human history, most humans died before they could die of cancer.
But… Humans are living longer. The things that used to kill us isn’t any more. Which means a lot of people are living long enough to get – and to potentially die of – cancer. Which means more people are getting cancer.
But there’s more. Not only are we getting better at not dying to other causes – we’re also living longer with cancer. Which means people who would have died of cancer aren’t.
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