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cancer due nearly entirely to modern environmental factors?

Hmm... I've read elsewhere that many scientists believe that some if not all cancers are somehow caused by viruses.
 
These people are doctors, as in they actually went to school? Cancer isn't /that/ common, so examining a few mummies(there aren't that many) will show very little cancer. Per their article they did find cancer in one mummy which is reasonable considering the small sample size. Modern life has certainly raised cancer rates, but to say it's the exclusive cause, especially on such flimsy evidence is absurd.
 
Here's the original article for anyone who has journal access:
http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/v10/n10/full/nrc2914.html


lxskllr said:
These people are doctors, as in they actually went to school? Cancer isn't /that/ common, so examining a few mummies(there aren't that many) will show very little cancer. Per their article they did find cancer in one mummy which is reasonable considering the small sample size. Modern life has certainly raised cancer rates, but to say it's the exclusive cause, especially on such flimsy evidence is absurd.
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One of them is a MD/PhD, the other is a PhD in archeology.
 
Also back then people lived to like 30 on average.

NEWSFLASH: People die of old age a LOT more now than they did back then!!!
 
"Dismissing the argument that the ancient Egyptians didn't live long enough to develop cancer, the researchers pointed out that other age-related disease such as hardening of the arteries and brittle bones died occur."

I think they dismissed an important point. Cancer usually occurs from long-term exposure to carcinagens (there are exceptions). The longer you age the greater the risk. Brittle bones and hardening arteries can be caused by bad diet and not just aging.
 
lxskllr said:
These people are doctors, as in they actually went to school? Cancer isn't /that/ common, so examining a few mummies(there aren't that many) will show very little cancer. Per their article they did find cancer in one mummy which is reasonable considering the small sample size. Modern life has certainly raised cancer rates, but to say it's the exclusive cause, especially on such flimsy evidence is absurd.
Click to expand...

Let's see, sample size... yep. You got it.

If the cancer rate is 1 in 10,000, that means back in 4000BC when there were maybe a few hundred thousand people living across the entire middle-east, you'd see a few dozen incidence of cancer in the entire population in general. As opposed to modern day, where you have nearly 6 billion people...

Then of course the target sample is mummified individuals, which itself is part of a select group of the population in general. If the rate is 1 in 10,000, if your sample size is a handful, you have a fraction of a percent chance that any cancer will be found.

Stupid study is stupid.
 
SunnyD said:
Let's see, sample size... yep. You got it.

If the cancer rate is 1 in 10,000, that means back in 4000BC when there were maybe a few hundred thousand people living across the entire middle-east, you'd see a few dozen incidence of cancer in the entire population in general. As opposed to modern day, where you have nearly 6 billion people...

Then of course the target sample is mummified individuals, which itself is part of a select group of the population in general. If the rate is 1 in 10,000, if your sample size is a handful, you have a fraction of a percent chance that any cancer will be found.

Stupid study is stupid.
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yep. You also have to think about who was mummified. Only the elite. You can argue that they had a more regular diet, perhaps less exposure to harsh conditions and potential carcinogens.

Then again, they were the ones wearing most of the make-up. Lord knows what kind of poisons they used in that stuff... :hmm:
 
Read the Nature Cancer Reviews paper. An interesting approach, but not nearly enough controls to make such a definitive argument (and indeed, the wording of the paper is much softer than the Guardian article).

The authors too quickly dismiss the "they didn't live long enough to get cancer" argument. Arthritis and atherosclerosis both could very easily have happened at significantly younger ages than modern society, so they may be assuming their mummies are a lot older than they are. Instead of looking for tumors, they should be looking for precancerous lesions, which would show up in male prostates (among other places) at a significantly younger age. These may not be well preserved in mummies, however.

Edit: Whoops, looks like people already got to my point while I was reading the paper.
 
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Lets see how many holes we can shoot in this stupid study...

1. Most mummies you will find will be of wealthier individuals that were preserved in death because of their wealth. They will have had better lives, less stress, less work, better food, better care, and less work. All of which contribute to cancer.

2. As a result of this, your sample size is smaller and massively skewed. What you're doing is taking the smallest sliver of population that can be examined and extrapolating that when that sliver is nowhere near representative of the general population.

3. As mentioned above, age plays a significant part, especially for the general population. Since the general population cannot be measured in any meaningful way (no mummies or a small sample of found bones), you cannot extrapolate, especially since most would have died from other causes far earlier, such as poor nutrition, disease...etc.

Even when you read books about famous people 150 years ago (Lincoln for example), its a tale of everybody dying of diseases such as typhoid, flu, or others, all at a very young age. Same thing with Jackson (his mom, dad...etc).

4. Birth rates among healthier adults were higher with higher infant mortality, acting as a quasi-natural selection. Modern medicine has led to higher progression of genetic cancer. For example, IVF babies have a higher cancer rate. Is this because of IVF itself or the fact that IVF parents are more prone to genetic issues, thus resulting in them needing IVF, passing those issues on.

5. Most cancers are "soft flesh" cancers. Thus, for anything but mummies, all you would have would be bones. That means in order to detect cancer it would have had to have spread to the bones or detectible through bone marrow. Is this even possible for most cancers (lung, kidney, liver, skin, brain, thyroid...etc)? Not sure but doesn't seem like it would be.

As said above...stupid study is stupid.
 
the DRIZZLE said:
Never heard this. Source?
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wouldn't surprise me. I've heard similar numbers from classical and contemporary life expectancies.

The fact has remained the birth and infancy are the primary period of mortality. It's only in modern (read: contemporary) times that infant mortality (due entirely to modern medicine) has gone from ~35% to nearly 1%.

In ancient times, I imagine that infant mortality was somewhere around 40-60%. Then of course, the mother would often die, as well.

It's bar-none the most successful example of medical knowledge and practice.

hell, plenty of the Pharaohs lived into their 70s, 90s...
 
Lol thread title. It is a widely known fact that ionizing radiation causes skin cancer. Did the sun exist back then? My bible says the sun was created before humans, so i will assume yes. Skin cancer still existed back then.
 
ShawnD1 said:
Lol thread title. It is a widely known fact that ionizing radiation causes skin cancer. Did the sun exist back then? My bible says the sun was created before humans, so i will assume yes. Skin cancer still existed back then.
Click to expand...



Irrefutable facts and the truth have no place within ATOT.
 
We're exposed to more carcinogens and toxins here in modern America, mainly due to what we eat. For example, it shouldn't be surprising that the cancer rate in Latino's went up after immigration to the U.S.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/story?id=8261402&page=1
Pinheiro said that among the changes in cancer rates, one of the most striking is the rise in colorectal cancer rates, which nearly doubled among Puerto Ricans, nearly tripled among Mexicans and more than tripled among Cubans.

He said the changes can likely be attributed to diet -- red meat, in particular, is far more popular in the U.S. than elsewhere.

Brawley agreed, noting that the trend has been observed in the past, as when Chinese immigrants came to the U.S.

"[The] major reason is diet changes," he said. "Increased dietary fat and dietary obesity causes this. Rates were higher in the acculturated than those moving to U.S. Chinatowns."
Click to expand...

While not proven, I'm betting that fast food plays a huge role in increased colorectal cancer rates here. Acculturated immigrants are usually not rich and fast food is too easy to resist.
 
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