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Comment by fnl | Hacker News Reader

The world is the place we live in populated by the people we live with. If you want to say that cancer would have occurred equally had people lived longer in the ancient times although, then you are right. However, that would be not a novel insight at all. The point that would be interesting to announce is that cancer only occurs in the modern world and has not happened before, despite lifespans.

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"of the modern world" is ambiguous. You assume that the phrase is primarily referencing modern lifespans; others assume the phrase is primarily referencing environment.

There clearly is some interest in whether or not there are recent environmental factors -- i.e., factors other than lifespan -- which are contributing to cancer rates.

To your more general question, HN is full of programmers, programmers tend to think of themselves as "system" people, and since (in their mind) every discipline of science is just an attempt to understand some system, programmers tend to think that they can comment intelligently on those systems without any prior expertise in them.

It is only fitting then that you make a gross generalization about how all programmers make gross generalizations about "systems".

Furthermore, the original article was clearly primarily referencing environment.

"A quote from David put out by the University of Manchester saying "There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle" caused particular consternation."

from http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19591-briefing-cancer-...

I believe the OP has just misunderstood what the second article was objecting to.

Well, that is a good answer, too. I did not read it that way but then seeing it that way (based on pollution) actually is quite agreeable - although not proven. (We simply do not conclusively know the impact of cancer rate increase because of pollution except in special cases where the pollution is above "normal" - at least I am not aware of any such publication.) Also, what cancer-related organizations quote as bad - "There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle" is exactly that - a very misleading phrasing. So, yes, you can interpret this article two ways: either "pro" Schütz or "pro" David/Zimmerman. I understood the article as advocating the latter, however, to my relief most people seemed to anyways see it as it should be understood. So, maybe my question was not clear in the first place - or, more like it, I think, you guys have quite elegantly resolved my concerns :)

Yes, right. I even think there is quite plausible space to argue that cancer IS increasing because of environmental pollution. However, that is still quite hard to prove.

Concerning your last quote, I think it is not only related to programmers; It is a common state most prevalent in a human species we call "politicians" :)

It's a novel insight to me.

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