[HN Gopher] Peto's Paradox ___________________________________________________________________ Peto's Paradox Author : Vigier Score : 41 points Date : 2022-11-05 18:11 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | cube2222 wrote: | > Peto's paradox is an observation that at the species level, the | incidence of cancer does not appear to correlate with the number | of cells in an organism.[1] For example, the incidence of cancer | in humans is much higher than the incidence of cancer in | whales,[2] despite whales having more cells than humans. If the | probability of carcinogenesis were constant across cells, one | would expect whales to have a higher incidence of cancer than | humans. Peto's paradox is named after English statistician and | epidemiologist Richard Peto, who first observed the connection. | marginalia_nu wrote: | Seems conceivable that the evolutionary pressure would push | cancer rates down to some sort a similar level across species, | a sort of cost-benefit equilibrium. | briga wrote: | How long would whale lifespans be if whales had the same level of | medical care as humans? Humans today regular live well beyond our | natural lifespans, if we were all dying at 30 cancer probably | wouldn't be much of an issue | jollyllama wrote: | >Humans today regular live well beyond our natural lifespans | | Is this really so? My understanding is that humans in antiquity | who survived childhood typically lived to what we would now | consider retirement age. | geraldwhen wrote: | Yup. Unfortunately "mean age of death" is most commonly | known, but in reality many children died at birth, hence | lower mean. | sonofhans wrote: | You're correct; GP is wrong. Human normal lifespan is and has | been about 70 years, once you account for early demise, | especially from infant mortality -- | https://www.sapiens.org/biology/human-lifespan-history/ | karencarits wrote: | Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our | strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble | and sorrow for they quickly pass, and we fly away | | Psalm 90:10 (probably from about 1000 BC) | dinom wrote: | At this point it's pretty safe to say that behavior has a big | influence. I've never seen a whale smoke a cigarette, drink | alcohol, or inhale exhaust fumes while sitting in traffic. | MawKKe wrote: | Maybe you hang out with the most boring of whales | Lucent wrote: | I thought regenerative ability vs cancer incidence was a problem | for evolution to optimize per species rather than some | statistical certainty per cell. | jojobas wrote: | I always assumed that's because with people reproductive age | precedes cancer age by a long shot, so cancer is not an | evolutionary consideration. Blue whales mate till they die, but | orcas don't, So I'd expect orcas to have a higher cancer | incidence. | XCSme wrote: | I thought cancer is not about the number of cells, but the number | of cells that constantly die and have to be recreated (each time | a cell is created, it has a chance to be a cancerous one). Maybe | whales don't lose as many cells as humans, probably they sit less | in the sun... | majormajor wrote: | I read this recently - | https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/how-food-powers-y... | | Seems potentially related - it discussed this idea in part of it: | | > Maybe it's both, but Lane suspects we pay too little attention | to the latter possibility. He argues that it might explain the | outsized correlation between cancer and aging. From age twenty- | four to fifty, your risk of cancer increases ninety-fold, and it | continues to grow exponentially from there. A popular hypothesis | holds that the root cause of this mounting risk is the | accumulation of genetic mutations. But some scientists have | argued that the rate of accumulation isn't nearly fast enough to | explain the extraordinary trajectory that cancer risk takes over | a lifetime. Nor does the gene's-eye view explain why some tumors | stop growing when moved into a different environment. For Lane, | these facts suggest that cancer is best thought of as a | derangement of metabolism. | lordgrenville wrote: | I know about it from this blog post (warning: it's about | politics, not biology) | https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/14/living-by-the-sword/ | odabaxok wrote: | Kurzgesagt had a video about the topic: | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1AElONvi9WQ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-07 23:00 UTC)