

Scientists suggest that cancer is purely man-made - absconditus
http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=6243

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JunkDNA
_There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer._

Blatantly incorrect statements like this make me question the attention to
detail of these researchers. There are numerous viruses, most notably human
papillomavirus which are known to cause cancer. The sun causes cancer through
large amounts of UV radiation. Both are natural by even the most strict
definition o the word.

Until the advent of antibiotics and vaccines, you were way more likely to die
of an infectious disease than anything else. There is just no way their sample
size was big enough to overcome that.

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ljosa
I haven't read the paper, but it's worth noting that the paper is not in
<i>Nature</i>, as the linked article claims, but in <i>Nature Cancer
Review</i>. <i>Nature Cancer Review</i> publishes news and commentary. The
paper is published as a "Perspectives" article; such articles are meant to
provide commentary on "the implications and applications of science in our
society." It looks like "Perspectives" articles are not even peer-reviewed
(only "Review"-type articles are). Very unlike <i>Nature</i>. Rosalie David's
last paper in <i>Nature</i> was in 1987.

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rue
> _There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer._

Except naturally occurring cell mutation, specialisation and growth?

The argument itself seems somewhat feasible if formulated to say that
something about modern life drastically _increases_ the occurrence of cancers.
The data seems to suggest that one popular counterargument, that people tended
to die of something else before cancer got a chance (since the risk seems to
grow as a person ages), is not valid. The data set is still not quite large
nor heterogenous enough to be enough evidence on its own.

~~~
thisisnotmyname
Not to mention the sun.

~~~
wwortiz
Well that is partly our fault as well, HFCs and all that jazz eating the ozone
layer.

But considering Uranium isn't man made and all the other radioactive elements
and radiation that occurs naturally, cancer is not man made.

There is pretty much radiation everywhere, anything above absolute zero is
emitting infrared.

When you take everything into account cancer can't be man made but perhaps we
did lead to the widespread amount of cancer.

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abecedarius
There've been many studies showing almost no cancer among traditionally-living
peoples. E.g.

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-in-
othe...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-in-other-non-
industrialized.html) [http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-
among-i...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-among-
inuit.html)

What surprises me most in this article is, I'd have guessed ancient Egypt to
be 'advanced' enough to get cancer rates more like ours (among survivors to
similar ages).

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InclinedPlane
Until the industrial age humans didn't often live long enough for cancer to
become a leading cause of death. Moreover, the vast majority of people who
died in pre-industrial times were survived by relatives who were poor,
uneducated, and illiterate. Determination of their causes of death was by such
uneducated and superstitious folks, and the details of any pre-death symptoms
are lost to history due to the lack of record keeping.

Even in those rare cases where a person lived long enough to where cancer
would be a likely cause of death _and_ were lucky enough to be surrounded by
folks who were literate and educated there is still very little chance that
the symptoms of cancer would be noted or recorded accurately. More so amidst
the myriad routine disease epidemics and pandemics of history. If Quuxocles
dies of a mystery illness in ancient Greece it's as likely to be attributed to
whichever deadly epidemic occured most recently.

The idea that testing a few mummies is sufficient evidence to make such a
sweeping conclusion of cancer being primarily a modern phenomenon is rather
ridiculous.

