Why are so many young people getting cancer? What the data say

The prominence of gastrointestinal cancers and the coincidence with dietary changes in many countries point to the rising rates of obesity and diets rich in processed foods as likely culprits in contributing to rising case rates. But statistical analyses suggest that these factors are not enough to explain the full picture, says Daniel Huang, a hepatologist at the National University of Singapore. Many have hypothesized that things like obesity and alcohol consumption might explain some of our findings, he says. But it looks like you need a deeper dive into the data.

Those analyses match the anecdotal experiences that clinicians described to Nature: often, the young people they treat were fit and seemingly healthy, with few cancer risk factors. One 32-year-old woman that Eng treated was preparing for a marathon. Previous physicians had dismissed the blood in her stool as irritable bowel syndrome caused by intense training. She was healthy as can be, says Eng. If you looked at her, you would have no idea that more than half of her liver was tumour.

via www.nature.com

Sadly, my older brother Steve, a lawyer who practices international maritime law from his home in McCall, Idaho and all over the Pacific, has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, bile duct cancer, which has spread to his liver and elsewhere. He’s a couple of years older than I am. It was a surprising diagnosis, given his relatively young age. His doctors in Boise made the call on the late side; perhaps an earlier diagnosis would have made a difference. Now we will see whether state-of-the-art treatment, led by the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, can make a difference.

Steve is doing well under the circumstances, and is taking a pretty hard headed approach to this devastating news, continuing to work on his cases, since his clients still insist they need him. He and I suspect the bad case of Covid he caught close to its place of origin, has something to do with his cancer. About four years ago he was trying to negotiate the departure of sailors from their ship in Singapore harbor when a dying man from whom he was trying to get instructions sneezed wetly in his face. He soon came down with Covid and recovered slowly and not entirely. I suspect he’s one more victim of the crazy scientists who decided fooling around with novel viruses would not only make them rich and famous, but help humanity as well, though that latter bit was not well thought out, as we all later learned to our sorrow. A huge story, like the coronavirus itself, is the massive increase in death rates, the “excess deaths,” that is apparent now world wide. Is it linked to the pandemic? To the vaccines? Are these cancers, called “turbo-cancers” by people on X, somehow caused by Covid or the vaccines? I’m not expecting much enlightenment on this question from Nature or mainstream scientists, although one would think it’s a question worth asking.