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Why Did Cancer Rates Increase After WWII?
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
For some reason since WWII the rates of cancer incidence increased drastically, especially prostate and breast cancer. The jury's out on why exactly this happened. Our Stolen Future suggests that chemicals called "endocrine disruptors" were introduced into the environment and have caused the increase. There are others who believe that the chance of developing cancer has not increased but that improving methods of detection have merely found cancers that before would have gone unnoticed.
What do you think the reason is?
What do you think the reason is?
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If you live long enough, you will die of cancer.
This. In general increased cancer rates are a good thing. They mean that people aren't dying of anything else before they get cancer.
How do you adjust for an increase in lifespan? If prostate cancer rates spike up dramatically between 55 and older, yet the average life span is 54... you adjust for this how? Not counting all the prostate cancer?
Don't take that as an argument in favor of cancer rates staying the same... I just don't see how that would be helpful.
I'm sure they've gone up, as our diets have become worse. Vegetables now have less vitamins in them than previously because of the way they are grown. That alone boggles the mind.
We are a society built on temporary fixes to permanent problems. In the event we cure cancer, another problem will pop up that can be linked to diet or overall health practice. It's much easier to throw money at a problem in an effort to cure the end result, instead of change our lifestyles to prevent it in the first place.
Much more likely that our environment is saturated with industrial carcinogens.
I agree though; you have to die of something and if you live long enough its cancer. This is the main reason for the increase in cancer rates.
So, Cancer rates most likely did not increase after WW2. They remained constant amongst the old who are now more numerous, they remained nearly equally as deadly as they ever had been making them far more likely to be what killed you and they became far easier to detect making reported rates skyrocket.
Perhaps there might be a SLIGHT unnatural spike caused by a combination of radiotherapy, air travel, x-rays, and chemicals in the environment however the health benefits of those things vastly outweighs the costs. Heck, even advanced cancer treatment causes cancer rates to rise. Previously if you were prone to cancer of type X and got it, then you dropped dead in a few months. One case. Now you get it and are cured and it comes back and so on for years, making you as one vulnerable person report as dozens of cases.
I would say this as well, as pre world war 2 we didn't have anywhere near the medical infrastructure we have today. If you lived in rural america you probably didn't have access to good diagnostic care.
How many of those cancers detected would have gone unnoticed before 1945, when many people died of infections anyway?
Smoking is another really big one in terms of total cancer deaths, and is the main reason why there are still more per capita cancer deaths in the US than anywhere else in the world, as for many years more people in the US smoked per capita than anywhere else in the world. Dietary content (increased consumption of red meat as the country become more prosperous) is relevant as well.
Hitler was actually trying to prevent the curse from coming to fruition
good job, allies
Does it have anything to do with them being the only country to be nuked (twice)?
I'm honestly curious, not trying to be snarky.
In the 1950s and 60s, probably.
At this point, not likely. Right now many of Japan's cancer deaths are stomach cancer, which is diet-related and common throughout east asia, or the same lifestyle related cancers we get in the west (lung cancers for example).
woah... I could be wrong here but right now don't other countries smoke a lot more than we do?
This is what I've thought... in combination with longer life spans and such.
Back before WWII most people did not have access to diagnostic equipment capable of detecting cancer.... it was during the post war period that these tools started to become common, which allowed for more detection. Add onto that the increased life span, which has gone up dramatically, and an increase in the number of cancer cases is quite reasonable.
Cancer is kinda the final "getcha"... survive all the injuries and diseases and the big C is the guy that will most likely get you in the end.
Those who cower from tyrants deserve their chains."
-unknown
Look at Dave Arneson. 61.
What are the stats on this?
More people get cancer because they live to, other shit isn't killing them. They live in an environment that could definitely be improved. A lot of that has to do with peoples' behaviors. We can work on those things. Some people are just fucked by genetics, and that's not likely to change much.
I'll let you guys ponder that.
Also, does anyone know if the number of childhood cancers has increased?
You could say mental disability has dropped rates since WW2, but this because people used to consider people with messed up legs mental invalids.
I still have a Ripley's Believe It Or Not with an "amazing cripple" 10 years of age who can do long division.
But the fact that so many products these days are highly carcinogenic makes me question that. Plastics and petrochemical products in general, the sheer volume of toxins being pumped into the air and water by industrial processes, pesticides on the crops we eat (and the crops eaten by the animals we eat) - to ignore these massive sources of pollution is, I think, folly.
Fuck the fish that get strangled by plastic beer holders in the ocean - we're going to die because of pollution.
The 20th century saw humanity's diet *radically* shift, especially in the Western world, without anyone much knowing what it would do to us.
Pokemans D/P: 1289 4685 0522
What in particular do you do to avoid these things?
Nothing, because I'm lazy and it's almost impossible to actually avoid them. Worse than that, I drink a lot of diet soda when I know it's carcinogenic. I mean, they use aspartame to wipe out ant colonies. Because it is poison.
It's hard to change your entire lifestyle based on something you only half-believe, besides.
Yes, people are getting older.
http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/
Malnutrition sends his regards
Definitely (pdf link)
If you were born in the US in 1900 your life expectancy was 47.3. If you were born in 1950 it was 68 and now its in the mid-70s.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I would expect that as people live longer, they have more time to aquire cancer. My mother is recovering from breast cancer, but if she hadn't lived to be 54 then she would never have gotten it.
You can note that the period between 1930 and 1950 is one of the longest increases in life span.
Also, smoking became much more popular with men and then with women.
I'm sure that at least some of the increase is due to enhanced detection, but how much? I for one recently decided to become lacto-vegetarian. Should I stop consuming dairy products too? And what about the fruits and vegetables I eat? Should I try to only buy organic vegetables to avoid pesticides?
My grandfather died of prostate cancer. Seeing his quality of life decline so rapidly in the five months he lived after diagnosis, I don't buy this for a second.