The article seems slightly different from its title. What the body seems to conclude is: 1) the available evidence of ancient cancers is too sparse to conclude anything, given that even "common" cancers would be fairly uncommon in a population of only a few hundred mummies and few thousand skeletons, most of whom died before age 50; and 2) if there is an increase in cancers, it's probably due to preventable lifestyle things like smoking, rather than pollution or other background causes more generally.
In particular, the second part seems to cut against their original point: they first say cancer isn't a disease of the modern world, and then they say well, maybe it is more common, but if so it's mostly because of lifestyle factors.
Both those points do seem likely to be correct, though.
I was face-palming pretty hard at the beginning of the article, because my first thought was that, statistically, cancer is an old person's disease. Then, halfway down the article:
Almost all the mummies and skeletons were of people who died before the age of 50. "Ageing is one of the major causes of cancer," says Schüz. He dismissed as "weak" the authors' argument that they could find evidence for other diseases of ageing, such as arthritis and hardening of the arteries, and that cancer should therefore have shown up too. "In men today, 90 per cent of cancers occur after 50," he says. "So if you examined the bodies of 1000 modern men who died before 50, you wouldn't find many cancers either."
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We already know that individual cancers have different causes and different pathologies; breast cancer doesn't behave like pancreatic cancer, for instance. So, it's incorrect to say that cancer is a modern disease; it may be that some cancers are, and others are not.
However, cancer is certainly a greater risk for older persons, and large numbers of people reaching 70, 80, and 90 years is a relatively recent phenomenon. Along with that rise in median ages, you would expect to see a rise of occurrences of certain diseases, like cancer.
All headline simplify but this one seemed completely disingenuous.
99% of people would parse "cancer is a disease of the modern" as "cancer is a disease of modern lifestyles" Certainly lifespan is less popularly understood. But every point someone might raise here is merely refining the fairly well understood point that cancer is a disease of the modern world.
My summary of the article would "we'll make three or four fine, hair-splitting distinctions to keep an unpleasant truth at bay"
If it turned out that cancer, that horrible disease that kills nearly half of us, was almost entirely due [pollution/eating crabs/wearing shoes/fluoridation of water sapping and impurifying our precious bodily fluids] then that would be an unpleasant truth. That's what the original "research" on mummies seemed to be claiming.
If in fact it turns out that cancer is unavoidable if you live long enough, that's a much less unpleasant truth.
Right, the worldwide cancer death rate is a lot lower than it is for those of us in rich countries because poor people are too busy dying of other things like malaria and malnutrition.
My "almost half" was an exaggeration, yes (and a totally unnecessary one, nobody needs to be convinced that cancer is bad) though if you also take into account the fact that heart disease disproportionately kills the overweight, if you're not overweight and in a rich country your chances of dying of cancer might well be approaching 50%.
I do not agree: Cancer is a common "disease" (and I disagree that cancer is a disease, as it is quite different from any other concept we call a "disease") of the modern world because of lifespan. The longer you live, the more likely you accumulate the necessary mutations (i.e., organic state changes). To my best knowledge, there is no lifestyle factor involved (However, I admit that you could argue that environmental pollution has increased and ultimately trace that back to lifestyle factors).
I don't have statistics handy, but I believe there's been a large increase in lung cancer incidence since the early 20th century, especially since the 1930s, even controlling for age, mostly due to lifestyle factors (smoking). And lung cancers are a big enough proportion of total cancers that it actually makes a noticeable impact on the overall numbers, so the 20th century had a higher cancer incidence than the 19th century even for people of a given age. I think lung cancer is unusual in that respect, though.
That is partly assumable - especially since more people are smokers than ever before. However, our average lifespans have also dramatically increased in the mid 20th century mostly due to increased hygiene and antibiotics: 18th & 19th c. around 35 y, early 20th c. up to 45 y, late 20 th c. going up to 65 y. (worldwide). And lung cancer regularly shows rather late (beyond 45 y, definitely).
For what it's worth, a huge portion of the increase in lifespan has been at the child-mortality end. If an average lifespan of 35 sounds low it's because a substantial proportion of children died before the age of five.
In particular, the second part seems to cut against their original point: they first say cancer isn't a disease of the modern world, and then they say well, maybe it is more common, but if so it's mostly because of lifestyle factors.
Both those points do seem likely to be correct, though.