New research suggests that 1 in 2 people born in Britain after 1960 will get cancer at some point in their lives. But it’s not the bad news it sounds like.
Research by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) published in the British Journal of Cancer, forecasts that 1 in 2 people will develop the disease at some point in their lives. That's a major jump from its previous estimate, of 1 in 3.
Obviously, that's a frightening statistic, because cancer is a frightening disease. CRUK is keen to point out that this isn't a sudden leap in risk – it's down to a new and, it says, more accurate method of calculation. Our risk of cancer has been increasing steadily for decades.
Paradoxically, though, it's because we're healthier.
I know that sounds callous, especially if you or a loved one have recently been diagnosed with cancer. How can it possibly be that the rise in a deadly disease is a good thing?
But cancer happens when our cells mutate as they divide, and the older you get – and the more times your cells divide – the more chances there are for something to go wrong. The main reason that more people are getting cancer is that more people are living to an age where they can get it.
Professor Peter Sasieni, the author of the CRUK study, says: “Cancer is primarily a disease of old age, with more than 60% of all cases diagnosed in people aged over 65. If people live long enough then most will get cancer at some point."
Cancer Research UK / Via scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org
In short, the reason people are dying of cancer is that they're not dying of anything else first.
You can see this most starkly when you compare what kills people in the affluent West with what kills people in the developing world. According to the World Health Organisation, the top 10 causes of death in the West include four different cancers – stomach, lung, breast, and colorectal – but only one kind of contagious disease, lower respiratory tract infections.
In contrast, the top 10 killers in the developing world include no cancers at all, and five contagious diseases: respiratory tract infections, diarrhoeal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. Tragically, millions of people in the developing world are not living long enough to develop cancer.
World Health Organisation / Via who.int
CRUK estimates that two-thirds of the increased cancer risk is due to our improved life expectancy. The other factors are to do with our lifestyle. We can't stop ourselves getting older – and in fact we should be grateful that we get to do so – but, says CRUK in a blog, "we can stack the odds of avoiding cancer in our favour. Things that happen throughout our lives can speed up – or slow down – the rate at which errors occur in our genes. These include things we can control, and some we can't."
