[HN Gopher] Was cancer less likely in a pre-industrial world?
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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."
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