[HN Gopher] Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world? ___________________________________________________________________ Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world? Author : pseudolus Score : 89 points Date : 2021-05-15 11:04 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com) | GekkePrutser wrote: | I think it was mainly less likely because people were so much | more likely to die of other causes, so they'd die before the | cancer got a chance. Healthcare was at its most basic and out of | reach for common people. | | I'm sure some of our environmental issues make cancer more | likely. But we shouldn't imagine that the pre-industrial world | was super healthy. People were living in filth. This was in fact | one of the reasons they died so soon. | | It's also one of the few things we haven't really found a cure | for. I think because each cancer is a different random genetic | mutation that would benefit the most from a custom generated | antibody or something. Whereas other major causes of death have | been pretty much eradicated by things like antibiotics and | vaccines. So I think this makes the numbers relatively higher. | | And of course because healthcare was so poor, I'm sure there | would also be many causes of death misattributed. Even in this | day and age we can't seem to standardise it. Some countries | attribute every death to coronavirus if the person was infected, | others only if it was 100% certain to be the cause of death. | mlac wrote: | I'd hazard a guess that a lot more people also died of "natural | causes". Unless you cut someone open, the way cancer actually | kills you (organs shutting down, trouble breathing, etc) would | be described as "natural causes" or getting old and dying... | arnejenssen wrote: | The modern age has possibly removed some carcinogens like | inhaling smoke from (bon)fires, mycotoxins from spoilt food, | nutritional illiteracy and unsanitary conditions. But the modern | age has introduced a lot of new ones like tobacco, food | additives, sugar, gluten, radiation, asbestos, industrial | processing of food, pesticides, sedentary lifestyle. | phonypc wrote: | Calling a lot of these things carcinogens is a little odd. It's | not synonymous with harmful, and even harm isn't obvious for | all of these. Food additives and processing in general? Gluten | for people who tolerate it? | fpoling wrote: | During the last 120 years wheat was optimized for machines | making its gluten content higher that could explain higher | gluten intolerance among people presently. | gadaprog wrote: | Asking out of ignorance here: why is higher gluten wheat | more optimal for machines? | fpoling wrote: | It was not done on purpose. As an unintended consequence | of selection for easy to harvest mechanically, easier to | bake, better to respond to fertilizers modern wheat | varieties contain more specific proteins of gluten type | that cause allergic reactions. | gruez wrote: | Is there any evidence supporting this hypothesis? | galgalesh wrote: | For context: the molecular shape of gluten causes dough | to hold better. Wheat with more gluten gives softer bread | which rises better. Hence why gluten is so prevalent in | domesticated wheat. | fpoling wrote: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20664999/ | sokoloff wrote: | Is tobacco use higher today vs pre-industrial eras? I don't | think of it as a particularly modern introduction to humanity. | magneticnorth wrote: | Tobacco was unknown in Europe until Europeans were introduced | to it by native Americans. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tobacco | sokoloff wrote: | Wow. That's mind-blowing. I knew it was a huge economic | driver in the early American colonies, but I always | imagined it pre-dated [in Europe] the colonization. | | Thank you for my TIL! | throw0101a wrote: | Other things that changed post-1492: potatoes, maize | (corn), tomatoes, cocoa (chocolate), vanilla are probably | most predominant across the Atlantic. | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange | | Bunch of stuff happening in the Pacific as well, e.g., | chilli peppers (capsicum): | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chili_pepper#Distribution | _to_A... | | Good book: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_ | World... | triceratops wrote: | The entire Colombian Exchange is eye-opening. Try to | imagine Italian food without tomatoes, Indian food | without chili peppers, or a Britain with no chips to | accompany their fried fish. | devmunchies wrote: | IMO above all is abundant food (overeating). No food is 100% | perfect, so if you eat way too much you are more likely to | expose yourself to something toxic or inflammatory. | | Our bodies aren't designed to be topped-off 3 times a day. | agumonkey wrote: | And with the ideas of 1) less food promoting better cell | health (especially factory made food being altered for sales) | 2) more exercise ensuring better health, I have a solid | belief that past life did well for our health on many fronts. | (sure they were lacking antibiotics and a lot of useful | medicine) | refactor_master wrote: | You lost me at gluten though. | [deleted] | bcatanzaro wrote: | Gluten is not a carcinogen | zackees wrote: | sv40 is a cancer causing virus that contaminated 1/3rd of all | polio vaccines. | | From wikipedia: The discovery of SV40 revealed that between 1955 | and 1963 around 90% of children and 60% of adults in the U.S. | were inoculated with SV40-contaminated polio vaccines. | | Link to studies: | https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=sv40... | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | "Studies of groups of people who received polio vaccine during | 1955-1963 provide evidence of no increased cancer risk." [1] | | [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25057632/ | Supermancho wrote: | I think a quick google search has steered you wrong. I don't | think this is a huge story (I've never heard of SV40 before | reading this thread), but just a little deeper...reading the | executive summary, the story seems less clear cut. | | "The committee concludes that the biological evidence is | moderate that SV40 exposure could lead to cancer in humans | under natural conditions." | | And there's more. SV40's probably also transformative | (observed in both mammals and humans) and the vaccine has | moderate evidence of causality. | | Then there's the strange disappearance of the CDC page awhile | back - http://www.laleva.org/eng/2013/07/cdc_disappears_page_ | linkin... | | And the papers correlating the virus to cancer: | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10472327/ | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16966607/ | | etc | sm0ss117 wrote: | Quick rule of thumb, the reason we associate it with cancer | is because the only ppl we systemically tested for it had | cancer. If you tested everybody you'd probably find it in | everybody since it was in a mandatory vaccine | zackees wrote: | NIH is corrupt and often covers for big pharma which funds | it. SV40 has consistently been found in tumors across the | body: | | https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/67/17/8065.short | [deleted] | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Correlation does not equal causation. A virus being found | in a tumor doesn't mean it caused it. | Sebb767 wrote: | One thing which I always thought of, but which the article | doesn't mention, is age. Especially older people seem more prone | to cancer, so in my mind a lower life expectancy will naturally | lead to a lower cancer rate, as people die before cancer "is able | to get them". Or am I missing something? | rtkwe wrote: | Life expectancy is a tricky number to compare across long spans | of time because it's heavily influenced by people dying young | which was much more common in the past than it is now, people | did die earlier but it's not as bad as a say 40 year life | expectancy would make it seem because that number is dragged | down by lots of early childhood deaths. | ineedasername wrote: | Yes, in 1800, even in more developed countries at the time, | about 30% of kids died by age 5. And being pregnant was | frequently fatal as well, with nearly 1 in 10 pregnancies | killing the mom. | dheera wrote: | Not only that, but I imagine in pre-industrial times, those who | got currently-curable forms of cancer didn't get cured during | those times, and Darwinian forces stopped them from | reproducing. | | There isn't a necessarily good or bad here but those Darwinian | forces did eliminate a lot of genetic defects from the | population before modern medicine. | | In the future though we might be able to yet again eliminate | defects not by natural selection but by gene editing while | still allowing those individuals to carry on a normal life. | hanniabu wrote: | This is a common misconception. Life expectancy hasn't changed | much. It's children dying that bright down the average in | earlier years. If you lived to your 20s your life expectancy | was pretty much the same as it is now. | linspace wrote: | I have heard this multiple times and I would love some | citations because although most of the reduction in life | expectancy may come from death at child birth, for obvious | mathematical reasons, I cannot believe wars, famine and | disease don't account for anything | fpoling wrote: | [1] shows pretty convincingly that probability of a dearth | due to violence or war has not changed during the last 2000 | years. What we perceive as peace is a consequence of | extremely violent WWII and to lesser extent WWI that killed | vastly more people even after accounting for population | increase than wars in the 19th century. | | [1] - https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violence.pdf | watwut wrote: | WWII was 80 years ago. So yes, when when we compare | current mortality due to violenve with past, we don't | count WWII as "current". | watwut wrote: | And lack of antibiotics. | watwut wrote: | This is not true. Live expectancy for adults did changed a | lot too, just not as much as when you count also kids. | | > If a medieval person was able to survive childhood, then he | had about a 50% chance of living up to 50-55 years. | | This is from wiki. Our life expectancy is much higher. In | fact, contemporary medicine is saving a lot of adults. | inglor_cz wrote: | This is most emphatically not true and it is one of the | reasons why contemporary pension systems are nearing | bankruptcy and healthcare providers struggle with not having | enough geriatric professionals. | | Living into your 80s was uncommon prior to, well, even 1950. | Nowadays, many developed countries have significant cohorts | of people 80+ and even 90+. Unfortunately, while those people | are alive, they are not particularly healthy. We haven't yet | learnt how to expand average "healthspan" as much as average | "lifespan". | cm2012 wrote: | No | jeffbee wrote: | According the the US Social Security Administration actuarial | tables, the life expectancy of male Americans aged 65 years | has gone from 12 to 21 years in the last century. This has | massive demographic implications. | teachingassist wrote: | I agree, but cancer rates rise sharply as you age. | | So, your claim (that life expectancy hasn't changed much) | doesn't contradict the parent's claim (that a lot more people | are dying of age-related cancers). | nkozyra wrote: | In Victorian England (1840) if you made it to adulthood (20) | your life expectancy was ~ 60. | | It's 82 today. | | The effects are not as dramatic as when infant mortality is | included but our life expectancy has absolutely increased. | | It's a compelling theory, too, because the average age of a | cancer is 66 today. But it really addresses the idea of | cancer being less _prevalent_ than less likely. | eliben wrote: | Yes, age and life expectancy is a huge part of it. In the book | "Rebel Cell: Cancer, Evolution, and the New Science of Life's | Oldest Betrayal", Kat Arney touches upon this exact question | and reaches the conclusion that cancer was as prevalent in | ancient times as it is now (perhaps accounting for surges like | smoking-related cancers), and also mentions age as a big factor | in the archaeological discrepancy. | strken wrote: | Perhaps they control for age? | | A lot of the lower life expectancy was sky-high infant | mortality, and if you made it to 10 in 1850 (hardly | preindustrial, but preindustrial stats are harder to find) you | could expect to live to 60 or so. Presumably you'd compare the | cancer rates of your study's skeletons with the cancer rates of | today's 60 year olds. | okaram wrote: | I don't have data, but I assume that is only for rich males? | Maternity mortality rates were horrible, wars etc | lmilcin wrote: | > A lot of the lower life expectancy was sky-high infant | mortality | | If that was true, then age composition would be roughly the | same as is now, except for larger number of infants. | | You could even argue that if you had weaker infants die, you | should end up with statistically stronger adults than now and | you should see people live to older age than now. | | I don't want to say infant mortality rate wasn't high, I just | want to say that it has nothing to do with the topic of the | discussion. | ksaj wrote: | The weakness in that argument is that it presupposes | childhood health indicators and adult health indicators are | linear, which we know to not be the case. | | For example, the introduction and "ramping up" of | testosterone and estrogen at puberty has a significant | impact on the human condition that simply cannot apply to | the prepubescent state, as does their subsequent decline in | menopause and old age in general. | | Each stage of life comes with its own signals that can be | serious health conditions if present in other stages of | life, but completely normal and healthy at the appropriate | stage. A tween with acne is rarely something to call the | doctor about. But a 3 year old with acne certainly is. A | colicky baby needs a soother or some other placation. But a | colicky adult certainly needs medical intervention. | | So the idea that weak babies make weak adults and strong | babies make strong adults doesn't work out as cleanly as | this comment suggests. | [deleted] | nemo44x wrote: | It's amazing how precarious being born is. I think I read | that about 200 years ago around 40% of people didn't make it | past 5 years old or something like that. Antibiotics have | helped a lot in modern times, especially for mothers giving | birth. | inglor_cz wrote: | From a pair that has been undergoing IVF treatment since | November 2019: it is very precarious. There are a lot of | opportunities to die before someone draws their first | breath. | retrac wrote: | The improvement in child survival is attributed to many | things, but it may be a mix of vaccinations, less indoor | air pollution, much better hygiene, better nutrition, and | perhaps just better parenting. (People have had some very | peculiar ideas on how to care for and raise children; I | wouldn't be surprised if in hindsight our distant | descendants consider us woefully inadequate in that regard | too.) | | Most of the progress, in absolute terms, with reducing | maternal mortality and the infant/toddler death rate in the | industrialized countries was actually made before | antibiotics were developed, in the late 19th / early 20th | centuries. In England in 1851 about 26% of children died | before the age of 5, falling to 23% in 1891, 19% in 1911, | 11% in 1921, 9% in 1931, and 7% in 1941 (and then we're in | the antibiotics era). | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | I personally would have 100% died at least once without | antibiotics. Probably several times. | | My top three favorite human accomplishments of all time | are: | | 1. printing press 2. vaccines 3. antibiotics | | And the order of the last two is debatable. | devoutsalsa wrote: | Infant mortality was 165 deaths per 1000 births in the year | 1900, according to this... | | https://www.pbs.org/fmc/timeline/dmortality.htm | | ...I also like the link to play the video via Real player | in the upper left corner :) | tejtm wrote: | Not a biologist, but been around them long enough. I been | cultivating a theory that mammals strategy is more or less "go | fast; break things". That is, asteroid or not, we were on track | to out evolve everything that came before by extending and | exploiting explosive cell growth. No animal converts matter & | energy to body-mass faster than young mammals, the cold blooded | do not stand a chance. The competition would get larger | eventually only if some adolescent mammal did not eat them | first as peers. consider how you would bet on a 1 year old | raccoon vs a 1 year old alligator then again with a 5 year old | raccoon vs a 5 year old alligator | | The mammal strategy traded the long game for the quick win. | | We have all sorts of (genetic) machinery who's function is to | grow fast but then STOP as we can't support gigantic sizes. | (Maybe in part because of the quick and dirty foundations but | thermodynamics have scaling issues too) | | So we need to shut of all those machines before we get too big. | | And so here we happily sit in our bodies, our mammal factory | and everything is great; just don't push that big red button | over there, or pull that lever or that one or that one or ... | | eventually if you live long enough some of those buttons will | be pushed and the mammal machinery will do what it evolved to | do. grow fast and break things. | | A final observation on humans in particular, recently bipedal, | have not gotten all the bugs worked out on that. Deployed a | monkey patch for dimorphic gender singling requires cron job | flipping on a subset of growth machinery some years after the | main global shutdown but only flip them on for a season or so; | still seeing evidence of switch bounce issues, see ticket | BCRA1. | Kejiti wrote: | We humans are very unique though on how much care and | dependency babes need. | | From an evolutionary perspective natur might have just stoped | after we gave birth but for humans you need to be still very | healthy for much longer. | | We have a second evolution which we as a species gained due | to our more generic and bigger brain and therefore being able | to retain and learn more even through generations. | | Whenever nature stoped we continued (glasses, cancer | treatment etc.) | | I personally would not subscribe to your idea that cancer is | our basis and we just let loose. | | Cancer is just one sickness of a highly complex system. | | And after all why would longevity even be a goal for | evolution? It's a wishful human idea of lifing forever. I | myself I'm looking forward to NOT life forever and still | today the thought of not being able to end my life for good | is my worst nightmare next to loosing my mind. | lurquer wrote: | > We humans are very unique though on how much care and | dependency babes need. | | The marsupials of Australia called and would like a word | with you. | zabzonk wrote: | All mammals care for their offspring - it's what makes them | mammals. Many of them do it for quite big chunks of the | parent's own lives. | CyanBird wrote: | I think it is a cute hypothesis, but I don't believe it is | fully functional, how would this explain megafauna? An I am | not talking of moose, but of ice age gigantic mammals, which | were just _gigantic_ | reader_mode wrote: | They are extinct, so supporting his hypothesis ? It's not | like evolution is a design process in which something gets | "traded off" - random shit happens, something sticks. | darkr wrote: | > No animal converts matter & energy to body-mass faster than | young mammals, the cold blooded do not stand a chance. | | Feel like Argentinosaurus might have had something to say | about that argument.. | nradov wrote: | Yes if you live long enough eventually some kind of cancer will | kill you. This is inevitable due to accumulating cellular | damage. Someday it might be possible to repair that damage but | it's not clear how. | 7952 wrote: | I think evolution plays a part in why older people are more | prone. A debilitating illness in your teens is likely to stop | you reproducing and is more likely to vanish. But a genetic | trait for cancer later in life can get past on. | siggen wrote: | Medawar effect | adolph wrote: | There must be some evolutionary fitting function that | mutations serve that have prevented them from being selected | out. | pfdietz wrote: | And in very large animals there are adaptations that keep | cancer in check, even though they have many more cells. | IIRC, elephants have many copies of genes that induce | suicide in aberrant cells. | HarryHirsch wrote: | Amongst the ""hallmarks of cancer" (there's a pair of | papers with that title) is tissue invasion, angiogenesis | and immunosuppression - and there are genes for that | because the placenta needs those so the fetus can survive | and reach term. | | What I'd really like to know is incidence of cancer in | marsupials, birds and fishes, one would predict it to be | markedly lower. | yuliyp wrote: | The rate of mutation is significantly lower in humans than | in say viruses. Being able to adapt eventually to changing | circumstances is valuable. | dsjoerg wrote: | Your objection is correct, and none of the responses you've | received so far seem to have understood your point. I went | ahead and read the actual published paper (https://acsjournals. | onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002...) and it is just as | statistically naive as the NatGeo article made it sound. | | Let's cartoonishly oversimplify cancer so that we can see how | life expectancy would affect observed statistics. Let's say | cancer occurrence is 0% for people up to age 40, and then | starting on the 40th birthday, cancer occurrence is 10% per | year. Everyone who gets cancer dies immediately. | | Then, imagine that life expectancy in 1500 was 25 years old, | standard deviation 10 years (yeah lognormal blah blah just go | with it). So, most people don't live to 40, but the ones who do | sometimes get cancer. | | But then, after 1500, life expectancy mean increases by 0.1 | years per year. By the year 2000, life expectancy is 75 years | old! Much more cancer is going to happen! Many more of the | deaths will be from cancer! | | Cancer itself didn't change. | | So, these researchers see a lower cancer rate in the bones | they're looking at, but they need to do some MATH on the ages | these bones and of modern humans to know how to compare cancer | rates then to cancer rates now. | GuB-42 wrote: | Yes, I tend to think of an increase of death by heart disease, | cancer and neurodegenerescence to be good news overall. | | These diseases are essentially dying of old age. Better | treatment for heart disease will mechanically increase cancer | deaths and/or Alzheimer. | kmonsen wrote: | Yeah, you have to die of something and as you get old one of | those will hit quite likely. | Nasrudith wrote: | Reminds me of the actuarial sims which excluded all deaths | from disease, old age, and traffic accidents. Stairs were one | of the top killers but population tapered off even as "cannot | die of disease or old age" immortals although some outliers | could make it a bit past a millennia. | fpoling wrote: | Also, even if the low average life expectancy was due to | excessive mortality among children with chances to live up to | 70 once one reached 40 not much different than today, it still | does not imply that cancer rates were lower. | | It could be very well that it is those people who would die as | newborn or children without modern medicine and access to clean | water have bigger chances of getting cancer with age. | rubicks wrote: | Before normalizing the data for life expectancy? Almost | certainly. | throwtheacctawy wrote: | Have there been any studies that disprove the correlation between | petro-chemical production/usage and the rise in cancer? | | I've seen countless stats that plots petro-chemical use over | years, and cancer rates. The charts are identical. | szundi wrote: | People didn't live long enough to have cancer back then. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | Very young children get cancer even today. | deep-root wrote: | It's a bit of a myth that humans have only had long life in | modern times. This is partially due to the calculated "life | expectancy" of many eras including infant mortality where | perhaps 30% of the population died at age 0. | | If a quarter or half of your population is dying at age 0, then | another quarter or half must likely be living into their 70s | for the mean age to end up 35. | masklinn wrote: | > This is partially due to the calculated "life expectancy" | of many eras including infant mortality where perhaps 30% of | the population died at age 0. | | Well not really age 0, rather between 0 and 5. | | The rest of your point stands. | newsclues wrote: | Did the age of oil or age of nuclear power have more unintended | consequences? | pronlover723 wrote: | Possibly no, according to the article. | | up to 14% of deaths 400 years ago in the UK were cancer | according to the new research. It's currently 29% in the UK, | and 17% in the world. 29% is much higher than 14% but according | to the article people used to believe it used to be just 1%. | How much of that increase to 29% is because of new problems or | just because we live longer so cancers get the chance to kill | us more vs all the things that used to kill us earlier | sharklazer wrote: | The age of glyphosate, an antibiotic that has been sprayed so | much that it's testable in the rain and in sources of | groundwater at this point. The effects of long-term antibiotic | exposure are up still being learned. But it clear means a gut | biome disruption. | | Thanks Monsanto. Err... Bayer (same people who sold Heroin over | the counter 100 years ago) | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | Last time I reviewed the glyphosate literature it wasn't that | impressive of a link between Roundup and cancer. Has anything | changed? | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5705608/ | | I agree Monsanto is a horrible company, but for other | reasons. | pfdietz wrote: | Glyphosate must be bad, because Monsanto is bad. It's | inference by moral contagion, which as everyone knows is an | excellent way to do science. | slumdev wrote: | Are you from the Agvocate "Tough Conversations" team? | titzer wrote: | Did you actually read the article you linked? It is | actually arguing that logic doesn't work. | | > Overall, a scrutiny of the method used in these | commentaries by Samsel and Seneff reveals a major flaw. | These authors employ a deductive reasoning approach based | on syllogism, which is formed by two or more propositions | used to generate a conclusion. The first proposition is | generally related to glyphosate's properties (e.g., | glyphosate is a chelator of Mn) and the second proposition | is related to human physiology (e.g., sperm motility | depends on Mn). From each of these pairs of propositions, | Samsel and Seneff conclude a causative link of glyphosate | with the etiology of different diseases. For instance, | since glyphosate is a metal chelator (proposition 1), and | since sperm motility depends on Mn (proposition 2), they | conclude that glyphosate may partially explain increased | rates of infertility and birth defects (13). They extend | this reasoning to multiple body functions to propose that | the dysregulation of Mn utilization in the body due to | glyphosate's metal chelating properties explains autism, | Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, anxiety disorder, | osteoporosis, inflammatory bowel disease, renal lithiasis, | osteomalacia, cholestasis, thyroid dysfunction, and | infertility. More recently, Beecham and Seneff have used | the same reasoning to conclude on a causative link between | glyphosate chelation of Mn and the large rise in the | incidence of autism spectrum disorders in children within | the US (35). However, there are no scientific studies | establishing a causative link between glyphosate and the | described chronic diseases. | | They are literally saying that syllogism cannot possibly | work because there aren't "scientific studies". What is | syllogism? It's literally logic. If you then read the | actual article they are criticizing, there is literally | graph after graph establishing a strong correlation between | disease and glysophate use. Not only do they find | correlations, they reason through several causative | mechanisms, in extremely detail, based on chemistry, and | then somehow that doesn't count? That paper is absolutely | choc full of evidence. What more are they holding out for? | It's like their brain doesn't work. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | I'm sorry, I don't see what you see in that article and I | don't think you understand it either. | | Graphs showing increased cancer risk since glyphosate was | introduced is almost zero evidence that it does anything. | Lot of other things have happened in that same time | period such as increases in obesity, etc. The real way to | study it is to give an animal glyphosate and see if it | does anything to cancer rates. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4819582/ | | Evaluation of carcinogenic potential of the herbicide | glyphosate, drawing on tumor incidence data from fourteen | chronic/carcinogenicity rodent studies | | "There was no evidence of a carcinogenic effect related | to glyphosate treatment." | titzer wrote: | You seem motivated to push a particular narrative and are | cherry picking papers to support it, so I really don't | want to go back and forth anymore about this, but here's | a even larger meta-study that has a completely different | conclusion. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7014589/ | | > The strongest evidence shows that glyphosate causes | hemangiosarcomas, kidney tumors and malignant lymphomas | in male CD-1 mice, hemangiomas and malignant lymphomas in | female CD-1 mice, hemangiomas in female Swiss albino | mice, kidney adenomas, liver adenomas, skin | keratoacanthomas and skin basal cell tumors in male | Sprague-Dawley rats, adrenal cortical carcinomas in | female Sprague-Dawley rats and hepatocellular adenomas | and skin keratocanthomas in male Wistar rats. | | In fact, this paper links to some of the same studies | that the paper you linked to also does, with different | conclusions. In particular, it seems your paper was | extremely selective about _which_ cancers could be caused | by glysophate, e.g. ignoring several types. | | > Graphs showing increased cancer risk since glyphosate | was introduced is almost zero evidence that it does | anything. | | That's just an absurd statement, so I'll disengage now. | axguscbklp wrote: | >Bayer (same people who sold Heroin over the counter 100 | years ago) | | You say that like selling heroin over the counter is a bad | thing. | speedgoose wrote: | I thought it was no evidence of glyphosate causing cancer. A | bit like we don't have evidence than 3/4/5G causes cancer. | [deleted] | slumdev wrote: | The evidence of Roundup/glyphosate's carcinogenicity is | playing out in courtrooms around the world. | | And it ain't looking good for Bayer. | ch4s3 wrote: | Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop | desiccant not an antibiotic. | noT1 wrote: | I thought it was accepted by the medical community every major | ailment occurred at much higher rates "back in the day". That | it's a case of having lacked sophisticated detection methods the | numbers are so low. | sonograph wrote: | Tangent topic; | | I have often wondered if back pain was less likely in the past? | How did they manage without chiropractors? | michaelmachine wrote: | Chiropractors don't actually help with back pain or any of the | other problems they claims to help. The practice is based on | "re-aligning" subtle subluxations in the spine. Two problems: | there is no evidence that these subtle subluxations exist, and | there is no evidence that spine alignment even extreme ones | cause any ailments other than pinched nerves. Here is a good | summary about the history of this pseudo-science: | https://theoutline.com/post/1617/chiropractors-are-bullshit | agumonkey wrote: | so it's a high grade placebo placebo massage ? | klodolph wrote: | I imagine the answer is different depending on whether you have | agriculture. Agriculture can be back-breaking work. | throwawayboise wrote: | > How did they manage without chiropractors? | | Tough it out. You had to work/farm/hunt to survive. | jeltz wrote: | Excerise and especially walking and running does a lot for back | health but at the same time they probably did a lot heavy | lifting and handicraft (weaving, shoe making, etc) in bad | ergonomic positions. | 1123581321 wrote: | Poor ergonomics are almost non-existent in traditional | cultures. This makes some intuitive sense as only in a | wealthy industrialized society is poor posture and back/leg | weakness de-correlated from surival. This is one starting | point to research it: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandso | da/2015/06/08/4123147... | croes wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27164956 | XorNot wrote: | Chiropractors are charlatans so it was the same as any other | healing elixir scam that was being run (which are notable and | commonplace throughout history). | hirundo wrote: | My brother is a chiropractor who mostly agrees with you. He | thinks that most chiropractors do about as much harm as good, | or more. | | Of course, he believes otherwise about his own particular | school of chiropractic, the Gonstead Technique. As a long | time beneficiary of that method I've come to agree with him. | It has helped me quite a bit, and the long list of his vastly | improved patients (many or most who are refugees from other | chiropractors) is impressive and convincing to me. | | Some healers are quacks; in some disciplines, most are. But | that doesn't make them all quacks. | cmiller1 wrote: | I've done some research on this and it seems there is some | evidence that what chiropractors do, Spinal Manipulation | Therapy, is effective when combined with traditional | medicine and physical therapy at reducing chronic back pain | (and can help some people manage it with reduced pain | management medication which is a plus!) However if a | chiropractor tells you they can fix your stomach or | headaches or anxiety by cracking your back they're a quack. | abz10 wrote: | I have hEDS hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (so does | possibly 2% of the population.) The vast majority don't | who have it don't know it. My stomach issues and | headaches are caused by joint problems with a likely | vagus nerve link. It's entirely possible that the kind of | people the go to chiropractors could benefit in this way. | | They may be on to something without knowing exactly what. | hirundo wrote: | Strong disagree with regard to headaches. I've had | immediate relief from debilitating headache pain after an | adjustment. | abz10 wrote: | Have to ask, are you weirdly flexible? | hirundo wrote: | No. | ekianjo wrote: | You dont have to wonder. Look at regions with poor levels of | mechanization and you will find farmers in pretty bad shape. | cortic wrote: | >How did they manage without chiropractors? | | We've always had charlatans pretending to have solutions to our | problems before chiropracty and homeopathy, we had traveling | salesmen peddling fish oil as a cure-all and of course the | power of prayer. | | Not sure if it speaks to the gullibility of humanity or | craftiness of private enterprise. | throw0101a wrote: | Perhaps of some interest is the book _The Emperor of All | Maladies: A Biography of Cancer_ : | | > _The book weaves together Mukherjee 's experiences as a | hematology/oncology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital as | well as the history of cancer treatment and research.[3][5] | Mukherjee gives the history of cancer from its first | identification 4,600 years ago by the Egyptian physician Imhotep. | The Greeks had no understanding of cells, but they were familiar | with hydraulics. Hippocrates thus considered illness to be an | imbalance of four cardinal fluids: blood, black bile, yellow | bile, phlegm. Galen applied this idea to cancer, believing it to | be an imbalance of black bile. In 440 BCE, the Greek historian | Herodotus recorded the first breast tumor excision of Atossa, the | queen of Persia and the daughter of Cyrus, by a Greek slave named | Democedes. The procedure was believed to have been successful | temporarily. Galen's theory was later challenged by the work of | Andreas Vaselius and Matthew Baille, whose dissections of human | bodies failed to reveal black bile._ | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_of_All_Maladies | | PBS made it into a documentary: | | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_(film) | | * https://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/ | 101001001001 wrote: | https://youtu.be/06e-PwhmSq8 | blutfink wrote: | Betteridge's Law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a | question mark can be answered by the word no." | mikewarot wrote: | When I saw a great^n grandmother's 1870 census entry, which said | she had 7 children, 1 of which was still alive (at 55), the | reality of life back then hit me hard. | | This a meaningless question for most people, if it helps save | lives in the future, great. | | I think you should also pay attention to Bret Weinstein's work on | telomeres and cancer. If the environmental pressures are for a | low age, you end up with long telomeres to allow more dividing of | cells to replace those damaged, however those same long telomeres | make you more susceptible to cancer should you live longer. | agumonkey wrote: | But did they die of cancer ? | newsclues wrote: | Most didn't live long enough to die of cancer. | | I think infant mortality was high, and the likelihood of | simple infection killing you was high. | CoryAlexMartin wrote: | Are our telomeres long enough to allow for the development of | cancer, or is it necessary for the system to be overridden, | thus allowing cells to replicate indefinitely? My layman's | understanding was that benign moles were benign, and not | cancerous, because the telomere system was functioning normally | and limiting growth. Am I wrong? | inglor_cz wrote: | The main thing that stops bad cells from proliferating isn't | telomeres, but our own immune system. NK cells (natural | killers) are very efficient in terminating everything | suspicious with extreme prejudice, so to say. | | Successful cancer is the one that learns how to look | innocently, at least to the immune cells patrolling the body. | | Successful immunological treatment (actually using mRNA | vaccines, that is what Moderna and BioNTech were originally | about; Covid vaccines are only an adaptation) teaches the | immune system to recognize the bad cells again based on their | mutations. It will then jump into action and control the | cancer growth. | CoryAlexMartin wrote: | It never occurred to me that the immune system was involved | in keeping cancer at bay, but that makes sense. Shows how | lacking my biology knowledge is! | Aerroon wrote: | > _Are our telomeres long enough to allow for the development | of cancer, or is it necessary for the system to be | overridden, thus allowing cells to replicate indefinitely?_ | | I'm not sure that it's actually telomere length itself that's | the factor. I think it's more about telomerase. | | Telomerase is the enzyme that lengthens telomeres. In cancer | cells telomerase production is (usually) upregulated. This | leads to cancer cells being able to continue dividing without | telomere shortening being a problem. | | However, this is just a guess. I'm not clear on the details | of the processes. | R0b0t1 wrote: | Moles don't stop growing primarily because of telomere length | but because the human genome has effective methods of | controlling cancer. You get cancer something like 4 times a | day but the cells are terminated. (It is possible telomeres | play some part in this, but I have never seen it proposed.) | | What you are likely trying to broach is the question "do | organisms evolve to die?" the answer to which is "yes." This | was originally studied in pea plants. The maturation of the | seed pods sends a chemical signal back to the main plant | which induces death. It dies so that its progeny have more | space; this is incentivized over generations because a | changing genome is more advantageous to a static one. | | Same logic can be applied to animals. It is not just that | there may be no pressure to evolve telomere repair, it may be | that telomere repair is markedly disadvantageous. | bryanmgreen wrote: | Probably a dumb question, but I've wondered if plastic has | anything to do with cancer in the modern era? | | Mostly everything we consume these days has been touched by a | form of plastic. | ksd482 wrote: | I think it's a valid question. | | I am wondering if microplastic is a factor in addition to air | and water pollution, processed/pre-packaged food. | | Another factor maybe humankind beating/cancelling natural | selection due to modern medicine. So people who would normally | perish in olden days are living longer only to be later killed | by cancer. | | There's another factor of total population. More people means | more diversity and more DNA copying errors? Can someone expert | in this field comment on this? | throwaway12319 wrote: | There's very extensive documentation on the carcinogenic effect | of microplastic and atmospheric particulate. | | It's not a debated issue: it's well known. | pharrington wrote: | This presentation[1] from two years ago says two monomers | used in different microplastics are _known_ to be | carcinogenic (ethylene oxide and vinyl chloride) - other | monomers might be, and the polymers themselves weren 't known | to be carcinogenic. Do you have some more up-to-date sources | ? | | [1]https://cues.rutgers.edu/2019-microplastics- | conference/pdfs/... | supernova87a wrote: | You know there's a public health saying about the efficacy of | interventions: | | "After you save people from dying of cheap things, they start | dying of expensive things." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-15 23:00 UTC)