I think that's a fair interpretation but that we can make others. It was just the nicest looking of the graphs I found on google images for 'cancer mortality over time' or some query like that.
The central point I'm trying to make, which was a surprise to me as much as others, is that there hasn't been some dramatic decline in cancer like I expected. If you look at graphs for other things we see amazing gains in prevention and treatment that don't particularly occur in cancer. To pick one at random, the pancreatic cancer line on the graph above is basically flat.
And so, if it isn't changing a whole lot, why is that? The standard theory is that cancer is really complicated and it's DNA. The alternative theory is that it's the mitochondria(l DNA).
I'm not in some crusade against medicine, it just seems to make more sense to me and explains the lack of progress.
As Feynman said, the easiest person to fool is yourself, so who knows, maybe I'm wrong. But then I also worry about the story of the doctor who invented washing hands between procedures, and the story of the doctor who discovered the cause of stomach ulcers.
> To pick one at random, the pancreatic cancer line on the graph above is basically flat.
Pancreatic cancer mortality is heavily correlated with age. What happened is that people now live longer, and when older people get pancreatic cancer, they have a lot more probability to die.
The central point I'm trying to make, which was a surprise to me as much as others, is that there hasn't been some dramatic decline in cancer like I expected. If you look at graphs for other things we see amazing gains in prevention and treatment that don't particularly occur in cancer. To pick one at random, the pancreatic cancer line on the graph above is basically flat.
And so, if it isn't changing a whole lot, why is that? The standard theory is that cancer is really complicated and it's DNA. The alternative theory is that it's the mitochondria(l DNA).
I'm not in some crusade against medicine, it just seems to make more sense to me and explains the lack of progress.
As Feynman said, the easiest person to fool is yourself, so who knows, maybe I'm wrong. But then I also worry about the story of the doctor who invented washing hands between procedures, and the story of the doctor who discovered the cause of stomach ulcers.