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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

It's not a lot of mental gymnastics. We know some cancers are, in fact, caused by viruses. For example, human papillomavirus causes cervical cancer, so (iirc) women with fewer than 20 sexual partners are less likely to get cervical cancer because they are less likely to have contracted human papillomavirus.

But the lack of evidence is suspiciously large at this point.

Such evidence will not be found if we never look because we already assumed the conclusion and dismiss those thinking out loud as nutters engaging in a lot of mental gymnastics.

Edit: https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/basic_info/cancers.htm

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Again all you’re doing is providing a mechanism for how some infection could cause cancer AND smoking - not smoking causing cancer. That’s an easy one to find evidence for… just look for the co-occurrence of smoking, cancer, and this infection. Sorting out which causes which is hard but not impossible after that.

To find smoking causing cancer you’d have to find smoking increasing amongst people who get cancer. I don’t have studies to point to but i’m pretty sure that’s been looked at. By the tobacco companies if nobody else

No, you are getting off the rails here - to prove that cancer causes smoking you have to provide real life example of a non smoker, where after getting cancer, a patient starts to smoke. That patient might be some kind of exception, but this does not work for cancer patients at all. So, cancer akkktually does not cause smoking and there is no way to prove that, unless you are thinking of developing mutation of cancer that carries some mutagen, that as a side effect also causes patients to start smoking, but let's be real...

And it is not smoking that causes cancer, but exposure to chemicals, that causes cancer. And only if that exposure is critical. For the same reason you are able to take x-rays, but not often. So if you are smoking peace pipe ceremonially once per occassion - this is not going to cause you a cancer.

to prove that cancer causes smoking you have to provide real life example of a non smoker, where after getting cancer, a patient starts to smoke.

No, I wouldn't. I would have to prove, for example, that someone started smoking after getting human papillomavirus and that there was a mechanism plausibly linking the infection with the craving for cigarettes.

I don't readily know how to make the linguistic distinctions I want to make here. Sure, if you want to say "They first have to have a diagnosis of cancer..." okay, I'm dead in the water.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that we don't fully understand what causes cancer so it's possible that whatever living thing is a factor in causing cancer may also alter behavior such that it makes a diagnosis of cancer more likely.

This is probably not worth discussing further. "You cannot solve a problem using the same mental models that created it" but those "proven" mental models are a handy means to dismiss someone in conversation as getting off the rails.

> No, I wouldn't. I would have to prove, for example, that someone started smoking after getting human papillomavirus and that there was a mechanism plausibly linking the infection with the craving for cigarettes

Thar wouldn't prove cancer causes smoking (or prove anything), but it would suggest the potential of a common cause between cancer and smoking.

Yes, I just said that.

I think I'm done here.

Hey, English is not my native language and "getting off the rails" here was meant, that you are leading yourself astray and falling off the cliff. I mean you are losing track of this debate that smoke is causing a cancer.

But to be fair, I can't see sense of following other logic of yours, because I recently lost a relative to a cancer and there was absolutelly nothing to blame for, except that she got into toxic environment, which killed her.

Also, if we come to that - did you know, that in UK there were cases, that spouse was poisoned by chemicals, that causes cancer - are you aware that there are thousands of medical drugs, that has side effect that might cause cancer? How are you going to explain those with your logic? So, apparently person is developing a disease, and in process of treating that disease, person develops a cancer... good luck in explaining that with behavioral impact, like you are trying to do on fixating on HPV, which is only one of thousands viruses that can potentially damage cells and eventually damage cell programming and cause a cancer.

HPV is causing deformations of human cells. That is basically definition of what cancer does, only cancer is caused by wrong cell service programming itself - not by viruses. HPV itself can't cause cancer upon entering human body - there has to be development of mutated cell, that starts to spread cancer. If you think, that HPV causes behaviour, well... hard luck, you can end up by blaming your parents.

Give your kids a vaccine against herpes and HPV and stap worrying about something you can't affect and reading those articles is not going to help, knowing that (constant)stress also causes cancer. Not intended to be rude, but women are more affected by hormones and no sex also can cause cancer. You don't have to be smoker and can eat healthy to get cancer nowadays, but to prevent degradation of cell programming is responsibility of genes.

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