then why do doctors do cancer screening by age and family history and not lifetyle? hmm. except for smoking, a lot is unkown about who gets cancer.
Some cancers are more likely to occur based on gender and more predictable gene expressions, but these aren’t mutually exclusive. You can be more likely to get cancer without doing anything special while still vulnerable to an increased risk of cancer through exposure to carcinogens (like alcohol, smoke, processed meats, etc).
> Data show that smoking, drinking alcohol and obesity are the biggest contributors to cancer worldwide.
> Nearly 50% of cancer deaths worldwide are caused by preventable risk factors, such as smoking and drinking alcohol, according to the largest study of the link between cancer burden and risk factors
Interested to see what your response is to the article once you finish reading it :-)
The human body can take enormous amounts of environmental abuse, but there’s clearly room for improvement.
Many lives will experience cancer, but not the majority. So it seems to be more complex that immune inadequacy (unless 60% of immune systems are working really well, which would be noteworthy). It seems like a reasonable hypothesis that environment is playing a larger role than individual genetic variations. So encouraging people (or even scaring them) to not smoke, not drink, eat better and exercise more seems like a reasonable approach - it won't cure cancer, but it could reduce rates?
1: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics
I know a few anecdotal cases where entire families of smokers died from lung cancer, while their partners, also smokers, had no problem, but I don't put much weight on that. Also I heard that smoking can cause other cancers like colon cancer in specific genetic conditions, but I don't know more details.
That approach works for me, anyway.