Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Global cancer cases will jump 77% by 2050, WHO report estimates (cnn.com)
56 points by rntn on Feb 3, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 24 comments


There are plenty of newer approaches to this, but this older blog post points to some possible reasons: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/death-by-vegetable-oil-what-....


Besides tobacco and alcohol use, obesity and type 2 diabetes are risk factors for cancers. High fructose corn syrup FTW.


More likely seed oils with incomplete fats it general. Of course environmental toxins and all highly processed foods don't help. Sugars are way up, but lifestyle disease tracks closer to vegetable oils than just sugar consumption.

Heart attacks climbed with seed oils. Obesity with modern GMO wheat.


- Population growth

- More access to testing

- People living longer, and not dying of other causes first

While yes tobacco, alcohol etc. do contribute to increased rates, everyone is going to get cancer at some point simply by living long enough.


This is one of those stats that get abused as fairly benign cancers like certain prostate cancers get diagnosed more.

But as someone who just lost my wife to melanoma, I can tell you that despite the fact that treatment advances has brought 5-year survival rates from 10% to 70%, deaths are increasing. The oncologists I spoke to attribute it to the ozone hole in the 80s and 90s and the tanning bed phenomenon of the 90s and 2000s.

Think of cancer not as a thing but as a disease process. Each variant has different drivers and each treatment regime has different risks. Social and environmental factors drive many negative outcomes.


This is what I tell patients. Eventually something happens to all of us, we just try to extend the time until that happens.


How much of this is attributable to a) people in developing countries living longer and having the chance to get cancer before something else kills them and b) improved diagnostic methods that allow more cancer cases to get diagnosed?


> Global cancer diagnoses will reach 35 million in 2050 ... from the 20 million cases diagnosed in 2022.

How much of this can be attributed to population growth?


Perhaps some, but only a small amount... current targets are hitting between 8.4-9.5 billion by 2050 (some estimates are we'd have already hit peak and be going down)! At about 8 billion today, we're talking between a 5% and an 18ish% increase. Either way much less than the increase in cancer diagnosis incidence.


"The researchers point to several factors as driving the expected increases in cancer rates, such as obesity, tobacco use and alcohol use, as well as environmental factors like air pollution."

It's interesting to see alcohol use lumped in as cancer causing as tobacco use and air pollution. I wonder what kind of cancer risks it introduced?


It’s a risk factor for colorectal cancer, which is not only the 3rd most prevalent type of cancer, but is increasingly being discovered in younger people. Alcohol has a number of deleterious effects, from microbiome destruction, to the genotoxicity of alcohol’s metabolite acetaldehyde, and finally alcohol changes your behavior to make other cancer causing activities like smoking more likely.


I don't get this. 77% is a big increase. Alcohol and tobacco use can't be increasing enough to drive that change. Obesity and pollution are on the rise, but that much?

Edit: autocorrect correction


The big secret: the number is completely made up, but it will be used as an excuse to take rights away from you.


The people who have the power to limit your freedom don't need to make up numbers in order to do so.


They can't do it without popular support, so they make up the numbers so the gullible people are happy with their rights being taken away.


The sound you hear now is my eyes rolling so hard at the lengths that conspiracy theorists go to sow distrust in institutions without any plausible evidence.


I'm starting to believe in meta-conspiracy where there is conspiracy to propagate conspiracy theories to discredit institutions and trust.


I wish you were wrong, but I know you aren't.


I'm not sure it in interesting to lump alcohol in there. I thought everyone knew it was wikdly unhealthy, just also wildly fun.

Air pollution deserves more attention IMO. I live along the Wasatch from in Utah and have been trying to strategize a move out of state because of air pollution. In sure I won't be surprised if it kills me and my family in the end.


Alcohol consumption is linked to increases in liver cancer


And throat/mouth, I believe. Alcohol is poison, even in small amounts. I still drink it occasionally, not trying to be preachy!


And apparently breast cancer and several others. I also drink regularly but I just finished reading Drink[1] and it goes pretty in depth on the health effects.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Drink-New-Science-Alcohol-Health/dp/B...


Micro plastics, forever chemicals, highly processed "food" including extracted seed oils and so many other things people didn't consume a century and a half ago, let alone a few thousand years ago.

Rain that is unsafe to drink literally everywhere in the world.

I'd it really any surprise?


But how will it be treated in 2050?

Which cancers cannot be treated with NIRS-guided ultrasound?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: