Cancer: a modern disease?

jflail2

Pretty interesting read:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1320507/Cancer-purely-man-say-scientists-finding-trace-disease-Egyptian-mummies.html

I'm not very knowledgeable on the medicinal front, so I have no idea how valid this study is, but it certainly seemed feasible...

ShinAce

LOL.

"Despite slivers of tissue from hundreds of Egyptian mummies being rehydrated and placed under the microscope, only one case of cancer has been confirmed."

Headline FAIL! But stellar salesmanship.

bobman1235

While I'm no scientist, I have to wonder how something that is "caused by man" can be so heavily linked with heredity.

Not to mention that "mummies" are a pretty small sample set.

Interesting nonetheless.

sucks2beme

Or the fact that we live twice as long as we used to.
Keep in mind mummies are a pretty small sampling of
the population of the time. Yes, some big sources of
cancer weren't very common at the time. But so many
of the people in the past died of poor nutrition and
unclean water. And the first thing to go wrong with
you was often fatal.

SolidSqual

Did people live long enough to get cancer back then?

ShinAce

SolidSqual wrote: »

Did people live long enough to get cancer back then?

In mother Russia, cancer GETS YOU!

nooshinjohn

The only thing new about cancer is the arrogance of a few elitist scientists to believe that mankind is the cause of all that is evil in this world. Cancer is as old as life itself on this planet. The fact that millions die every year from it is due to the fact that there are BILLIONS of people living today. At the time of the pharoahs, tens of thousands died from it annually because there were only a few million living then.

cnh

This is highly 'unlikely'? When I was in Grad School we used to 'joke' about the statistical models and evidence that our colleagues in Archeology called SCIENTIFIC?

SO MUCH CONJECTURE....so little EVIDENCE and the evidence they had was HEAVILY interpreted. Just because they could do some Multiple Regressions and a Factor Analysis or two...we were supposed to leave the critical parts of our brains at home? We were sorry that we COULD NOT do that. To this day these are the guys/gals, along with the Biological boys and girls that get the BIG GRANT money? lol

But as soon as 'we' survey their evidence we scratch our heads in 'disbelief' most of the time.

Has the incidence of cancer increased? Probably. But the problem is that CANCER is not some MONOLITHIC disease.....it can be triggered by a plethora of causes. Why do you think we haven't conquered it yet. It's not an IT!

Oh well?

cnh

cokewithvanilla

We live longer now that we did before. A 90 year old probably can experience (or is more likely to) different things than a 40 year old. Hell, if you have house pets and you take care of them, they tend to suffer and die from a lot of things that they don't seem to in the wild. Perhaps this is because your average house cat lives 15 years while an outdoor cats average is around 3... and the process of natural selection is slowed, at the very least.

I think we should all just be happy we get as much life as we get, and we certainly live it better than those in times past.

edit: as for the mummy thing... lolz.

nooshinjohn

xcapri79 wrote: »

Mankind naturally exhales carbon dioxide in order to breath and live.
Carbon dioxide has been declared a pollutant by the EPA. Pollution is evil.
Hence mankind naturally pollute in order to live. So it stands to reason that mankind is evil in this world.:rolleyes:

Seriously?!? Does your elevator even make it off the ground floor?

Back to the ignore list for you...

messiah

When you only live to be 25, it improves the odds of not getting cancer.

cnh

Just for the record here. Prehistoric lifespans were NOT horribly LESS than ours. Those 25-35 year or so figures appear in Civilizations that shifted to agricultural production and were also highly stratified. See Jared Diamond's many articles about this.

We know that in gatherer/hunter societies that had relatively abundant resources that once you got past the Infant-mortality years the average lifespan was not that much less than 'ours'.

cnh

cokewithvanilla

cnh wrote: »

We know that in gatherer/hunter societies that had relatively abundant resources that once you got past the Infant-mortality years the average lifespan was not that much less than 'ours'.

cnh

Interesting. I didn't know that. Why do such disparities of figures still prevail in most modern textbooks?

kevhed72

The American Lung Associations and American Heart Association, both non-political groups, have statistics based ON SCIENCE on how many people die every year from pollution.

carvcom

cnh wrote: »

Just for the record here. Prehistoric lifespans were NOT horribly LESS than ours. Those 25-35 year or so figures appear in Civilizations that shifted to agricultural production and were also highly stratified. See Jared Diamond's many articles about this.

We know that in gatherer/hunter societies that had relatively abundant resources that once you got past the Infant-mortality years the average lifespan was not that much less than 'ours'.

cnh

I agree, didn't Ramses, Egyptian Pharoah from over 3000 years ago, live well into his 90s?

messiah

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/health_01.shtml

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/people/index.html

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/dailylife/genders.htm

It may be that the infant mortality rate skews things, but the lack of modern medicine doesn't help the matters either. Ancient egyptians lived significantly shorter lives.

cfrizz

I guess that if you didn't sucumb to illnesses that we now have medications for, or get sick from the unsanitary conditions that people lived in back then you stood a pretty good chance of having a long life.

But CWV is also correct about our pets. They get all the disieses that we do.

My cat Tami lived to the ripe old age of 20, but for the last 5 or so years of her life she battled kidney disiese which is what finally took her. Now my cat Oscar only made it to 13he somehow got cancer in his jaw. I had to put both down in 2003 a few months apart.

The vet said that if our pets make it past 13, they stand a good chance of living quite a few more years. That certainly proved to be my case.

sucks2beme

carvcom wrote: »

I agree, didn't Ramses, Egyptian Pharoah from over 3000 years ago, live well into his 90s?

Royalty and merchant class maybe. The average working stiff
of the era didn't fare so well. First major injury, and it was all over.
Think hard of your life. If you didn't have penicillan or surgical
care, would you be alive today? You look at death rates on the job
at the end of the 19th century, it wasn't pretty. Add death during
childbirth to the list as well. We were generally thinner and in better
heart health back in the day, but bodies wore out quickly under the grind of
daily living.

pmckeealaska

More people have cancer today simply because we're living longer. If you look at the AGE ADJUSTED cancer rate in this country, it has been a flat line for the past 60 years. Rachel Carson's predictions of a "silent spring" have been shown to be false.

BottomFeeder

Mmmmeh. I'm with the bunch that thinks that all of the artificial ingredients & pesticides in our food, combined with many other pollutants, are contributing to cancer rates.

But I might be wrong.

snow

Remind me not to move to the UK. The article says "one in three people in the UK will get cancer" Seems much higher there than elsewhere if its actuallly true :rolleyes:



REGARDS SNOW

j allen

cnh wrote: »

This is highly 'unlikely'? When I was in Grad School we used to 'joke' about the statistical models and evidence that our colleagues in Archeology called SCIENTIFIC?

SO MUCH CONJECTURE....so little EVIDENCE and the evidence they had was HEAVILY interpreted. Just because they could do some Multiple Regressions and a Factor Analysis or two...we were supposed to leave the critical parts of our brains at home? We were sorry that we COULD NOT do that. To this day these are the guys/gals, along with the Biological boys and girls that get the BIG GRANT money? lol

One of my employees is running into exactly this problem while trying to finish his master's in archeology. Apparently the school's board or somesuch doesn't like his conclusion that there isn't enough evidence in his study to form a valid conclusion

apphd

BottomFeeder wrote: »

Mmmmeh. I'm with the bunch that thinks that all of the artificial ingredients & pesticides in our food, combined with many other pollutants, are contributing to cancer rates.

But I might be wrong.

+1 I'm in that camp as well. While I do think that cancer has been around a long time, actually I think we all have cancer cells running through us, I think that various man mad factors trigger the cells to aggressively multiply and become the threat it is. I recently read an article in some mag. in the dentist's waiting room about some doctors doing research that may be proving our detection methods may have gotten too good. The study suggests that just because a test finds a cancer, it may be better to leave it alone and monitor it. They believe that sometimes the treatment stimulates the cancer to become more aggressive and life threatening, while if only monitored, you may live long enough to die of some other "natural" cause before the cancer causes a problem.

Who knows? Remember medicine is a science, and as such is only advanced as our knowledge to date. The world was flat according to most of who were considered the experts/knowledgeable of the time, until proven wrong.

cfrizz

apphd wrote: »

+1 I'm in that camp as well. While I do think that cancer has been around a long time, actually I think we all have cancer cells running through us, I think that various man mad factors trigger the cells to aggressively multiply and become the threat it is. I recently read an article in some mag. in the dentist's waiting room about some doctors doing research that may be proving our detection methods may have gotten too good. The study suggests that just because a test finds a cancer, it may be better to leave it alone and monitor it. They believe that sometimes the treatment stimulates the cancer to become more aggressive and life threatening, while if only monitored, you may live long enough to die of some other "natural" cause before the cancer causes a problem.

Who knows? Remember medicine is a science, and as such is only advanced as our knowledge to date. The world was flat according to most of who were considered the experts/knowledgeable of the time, until proven wrong.

If you are lucky it might happen that way, but most people are not.

My cousin has always been a health nut. he is as skinny as a rail, eats all the right foods, does the colon purges, excercises, the whole nine yards. The only thing he doesn't like to do is go to the doctor for regular checkups. He thinks doctors/medicine are evil. He was told years ago that he had an enlarged prostrate, he decided to ignore it & continue to live/eat "healthy"

Well he got prostrate cancer and the pain got so bad and he lost so much weight he finally HAD to go. He refused to have surgery, but did get chemo, and was getting transfusions. He seems to have stablized.

He has decided to stop the transfusions, it remains to be seen if the cancer will reoccur.

Even when you do all the right things, **** still happens. And not going to the doctor isn't going to stop it from happening. Ignorance is NOT bliss in this case.

nooshinjohn

cfrizz wrote: »

If you are lucky it might happen that way, but most people are not.

My cousin has always been a health nut. he is as skinny as a rail, eats all the right foods, does the colon purges, excercises, the whole nine yards. The only thing he doesn't like to do is go to the doctor for regular checkups. He thinks doctors/medicine are evil. He was told years ago that he had an enlarged prostrate, he decided to ignore it & continue to live/eat "healthy"

Well he got prostrate cancer and the pain got so bad and he lost so much weight he finally HAD to go. He refused to have surgery, but did get chemo, and was getting transfusions. He seems to have stablized.

He has decided to stop the transfusions, it remains to be seen if the cancer will reoccur.

Even when you do all the right things, **** still happens. And not going to the doctor isn't going to stop it from happening. Ignorance is NOT bliss in this case.

+1 Cathy.... My mom has had cancer 5 TIMES!!! She never smoked/drank or had any other habit that would be considered a bad habit. Bottom line is if it's gonna get you, it will. How naive to go through life assuming that if it weren't for the percieved evils of modern life, that all would be heaven on earth.

bobman1235

snow wrote: »

Remind me not to move to the UK. The article says "one in three people in the UK will get cancer" Seems much higher there than elsewhere if its actuallly true :rolleyes:

The numbers are actually pretty shocking. One in three might be underselling it. One in six men will get prostate cancer, and that's just one type of cancer.

hearingimpared

Well I seem to recall watching the History Channel and History International that many, many well known ancient Greeks & Romans died from cancer.

My father, who never smoked, exercised everyday, drank one glass of homemade wine every night with dinner died from a malignant tumor in his brain at the age of 58. If it's there, its there and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Slow it down, maybe! Cause it to go into remission, maybe! but if its in your body or you have a family history of it, chances are its going to grow and if nothing is done about it spread throughout your body.

I've resigned myself to the fact if I don't drop dead from my previous hedonistic life style that cancer will get me because of my family history.

nooshinjohn

hearingimpared wrote: »

I've resigned myself to the fact if I don't drop dead from my previous hedonistic life style that cancer will get me because of my family history.

There may be a chance that your "hedonistic" lifestyle may well have preserved you for eternity.:eek:;):D

hearingimpared

nooshinjohn wrote: »

There may be a chance that your "hedonistic" lifestyle may well have preserved you for eternity.:eek:;):D

Hahaha, my grandmother lived to be 94 and she was definitely pickled. She drank a glass of muscatel and an espresso with a shot of anisette with every meal, three times a day for all her years. She was definitely preserved. She died quietly in her sleep one night in 1991. She was my father's mother.

My grandfather (father's father) died at 78. He had Leukemia but that's not what killed him. The took care of the Leukemia by removing his spleen and the stubborn old guy from Italy had to go to the bathroom after the operation and didn't want to disturb the nurses so he got up out of bed in the anesthesia stupor and riped all the tubes out of his body and bled to death.

So why did my father die so young from cancer!?! His sister, my aunt died in her 70s from stomach cancer yet their mother out lived them both.

You just never know!

Both my mother's parents died at 78. My grandmother from colon cancer, my grandfather from diabetes complications. My mother lived to 84. She had Leukemia but that's not what killed her. The spread of tumors to her pancreas, lungs & kidneys did.

Who knows!?!

exalted512

hearingimpared wrote: »

My grandfather (father's father) died at 78. He had Leukemia but that's not what killed him. The took care of the Leukemia by removing his spleen and the stubborn old guy from Italy had to go to the bathroom after the operation and didn't want to disturb the nurses so he got up out of bed in the anesthesia stupor and riped all the tubes out of his body and bled to death.
Who knows!?!

so your stubborness is generations back eh?:p
-Cody

apphd

cfrizz wrote: »

If you are lucky it might happen that way, but most people are not.

My cousin has always been a health nut. he is as skinny as a rail, eats all the right foods, does the colon purges, excercises, the whole nine yards. The only thing he doesn't like to do is go to the doctor for regular checkups. He thinks doctors/medicine are evil. He was told years ago that he had an enlarged prostrate, he decided to ignore it & continue to live/eat "healthy"

Well he got prostrate cancer and the pain got so bad and he lost so much weight he finally HAD to go. He refused to have surgery, but did get chemo, and was getting transfusions. He seems to have stablized.

He has decided to stop the transfusions, it remains to be seen if the cancer will reoccur.

Even when you do all the right things, **** still happens. And not going to the doctor isn't going to stop it from happening. Ignorance is NOT bliss in this case.

All too true. I hope my post was not taken as condoning not having regular doctors check ups. Your cousin is a good example of my thoughts on us all having cancer cells in us. Was it destiny that caused his to kick into high gear, or some other trigger? He may never know, but there are many things that can be ruled out as causes, for him, due to his life style. The article I referenced was in the early stages of study by a small group of doctors, and they were not saying to do nothing, but if early on and small, monitoring the cancer before taking more invasive steps may be better. Which may or may not prove to be the normal practice 10, 15, or 20 years from now. Good luck to your cousin and I hope the cancer does not return.

nooshinjohn wrote: »

+1 Cathy.... My mom has had cancer 5 TIMES!!! She never smoked/drank or had any other habit that would be considered a bad habit. Bottom line is if it's gonna get you, it will. How naive to go through life assuming that if it weren't for the percieved evils of modern life, that all would be heaven on earth.

Good for your mom, other than the cancers, she must be in good health and a very determined and tough woman mentally to beat those odds.
As to "if it's gonna get you, it will" this is true and not true. Discussing this could cross the line as far as bringing religion into the forum, but also can have a lot to do with how good the doctors and hospitals are in their treatment. As well as other health factors, intestinal fortitude, and maybe faith for people like your mother. I haven't seen any comments that indicate anyone being naive enough to think "if it weren't for the perceived evils of modern life, that all would be heaven on earth." Most have commented on how modern life is much improved over the hardships of life earlier centuries of man had. As far as medicine and doctors go, their license is to practice medicine. They may or may not be good at it, and even the best can not make anyone live forever. Anyone that thinks other than that would be naive. Like the old saying says death and taxes are the only two things we can count on in this life.
My father survived having the B24 he was a crew member on blow up in mid air after 8 of 10 bailed out. Spent the rest of the time as a POW in Poland and was forced (with thousands of others) on the black march across Germany for about 500 miles during a tough winter/spring with little to no food and sometimes no shelter. Only to have stomach cancer kill him at age 54. Go figure.