Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

65% of Cancers Caused by Bad Luck, Not Genetics or Environment

Posted by samzenpus on from the roll-of-the-dice dept.

BarbaraHudson writes The Wall Street Journal and the CBC are reporting that about two-thirds of cancers are caused by random chance. From the WSJ: "The researchers, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, analyzed published scientific papers to identify the number of stem cells, and the rate of stem-cell division, among 31 tissue types, though not for breast and prostate tissue, which they excluded from the analysis. Then they compared the total number of lifetime stem-cell divisions in each tissue against a person's lifetime risk of developing cancer in that tissue in the U.S." The correlation between these parameters suggests that two-thirds of the difference in cancer risk among various tissue types can be blamed on random, or 'stochastic,' mutations in DNA occurring during stem-cell division, and only one-third on hereditary or environmental factors like smoking, the researchers conclude. 'Thus, the stochastic effects of DNA replication appear to be the major contributor to cancer in humans.'" The CBC reports: "The researchers said on Thursday random DNA mutations accumulating in various parts of the body during ordinary cell division are the prime culprits behind many cancer types. They looked at 31 cancer types and found that 22 of them, including leukemia and pancreatic, bone, testicular, ovarian and brain cancer, could be explained largely by these random mutations — essentially biological bad luck. The other nine types, including colorectal cancer, skin cancer known as basal cell carcinoma and smoking-related lung cancer, were more heavily influenced by heredity and environmental factors like risky behavior or exposure to carcinogens. Overall, they attributed 65 percent of cancer incidence to random mutations in genes that can drive cancer growth."

9 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. IMPOSSIBLE. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Capitalist theory requires that everyone is a rational, voluntary actor. The idea that hundreds of millions of people will suffer due to random bad luck renders the whole philosophy inadequate to apply to reality, requiring some sort of mixed economy with bailouts every three decades or so to be workable.

    When I was young, I said to my (Russian) uncle, "Didn't communism fail?" He replied, "Yes, communism failed once, and nobody forgets. Capitalism fails every few years, but people quickly forget. We take from this that communism encourages people to learn from their mistakes."

    1. Re:IMPOSSIBLE. by tlambert · · Score: 1, Interesting

      True communism hasn't really even been applied anywhere...

      I think you are perhaps unfamiliar with the early history of the state of Utah, when it was called Deseret, and subsumed most of Nevada and part of Colorado and a corner of Wyoming. The early Mormon/LDS settlers practiced early Communism (early, because it predated Marx et. al., so obviously it wasn't called that yet).

      One of the problems was when the kids wanted new pair of dungarees (which is what they were called at the time), they would tend to use a knife sharpening grinding wheel to "age" the cloth past the point of being patched.

  2. mostly bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    There have been many thousands of studies that have shown the direct mutagenic effects of various carcinogens. This is hardly random. It seems these so-called "scientists" are basically getting paid to create some sort of disclaimer for the various large companies that cause most of the cancer in the world. So their strategy is to obfuscate causation with a bunch of stochastic noise, making cancer causation harder to prove in court.

    1. Re:mostly bullshit by fractoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There's a big difference between saying "most cancers are caused by random chance" and saying "there aren't specific substances that cause cancer."

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    2. Re:mostly bullshit by tinkerton · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's all pretty muddy thinking. Suppose that all cancers are decided by a roll of a set of dice, and carcinogens and genetics merely control how many black and green faces there are on the dice. Then a cancer is never just a matter of luck or carcinogens but always both. But it's still possible to conclude that there would be 35% less cancers if we kept the carcinogens down. Or put differently, we shouldn't hope to be able to cut in half the number of cancers by just removing carcinogens, because it just doesn't have enough impact. So you have a potentially very valuable research result, but it gets interpreted in a nonsensical manner.

  3. Initiators vs promoters by manu0601 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The headline is shocking when one consider the steep rise of cancer since 1945. If it was luck, then how it could change over time?

    But I think the paper could still be a valuable contribution, it is just that this summary ignores the difference between cancer initiation and cancer promotion. Many environmental factors favor existing tumors but do not create them. Hence initiation can be random, while promotion can be environment-induced.

    1. Re:Initiators vs promoters by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The rise of cancer is related specifically to the rise of life expectancy.

      Live long enough and cancer will kill you; it's the primary obstacle in immortality.

  4. Sure just leave out the top two cancers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Leave out the top two, by far the most common, and the remaining top two are still predominantly hereditary and or environmental.
    From: http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/uscs/toptencancers.aspx

    Top 10 Cancer Sites: 2011, Male and Female, United States Rates per 100,000

    1. Prostate 128.3
    2. Female Breast 122.0
    3. Lung and Bronchus 61.0
    4. Colon and Rectum 39.9

    then a big drop in numbers before you see
    5. Corpus and Uterus, NOS 25.4 ...

    Me thinks somebody is playing funny buggers with the numbers to get some funding for their particular line of research, while undermining the preventative medicine message at the same time. Evil.

  5. Re:No such thing as luck, scientifically by Kjella · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm with Einstein on this one, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Let's take your basic double slit interference pattern. Either they have some hidden quantum state which means it's not really the exact same thing or the laws of nature are rewritten at a whim for each photon that's far more absurd. Particularly when we can observe the exact same phenomenon on a macro scale in ripple tanks, if we send waves of water against a slit the size of the wave length we get diffraction and if we use double slits we get an interference pattern, all as a function of wave height. We haven't found what the quantum equivalent of wave height is, but it sure seems to work like it exists. Just like we haven't found the force carrier for gravity (unlike electromagnetism: photon, strong force: gluon, weak force: W and Z boson) but obviously there is gravity and presumably something has to carry that force. As for free will, lets just invoke the death penalty on all those who claim their crimes were predetermined. Because then their death sentence is too, right? Put that shit in a philosophy class.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings