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Comment by bhawks | Hacker News Reader

Cancers vary significantly in prognosis.

Canada has over double the number of deaths due to lung cancer and nearly double the deaths due to colorectal cancer compared to California.

Essentially cancer looks different in California than Canada. This makes drawing conclusions that there are thousands suffering unnecessarily extended end of life experiences difficult.

https://cancerstatisticscenter.cancer.org/#!/state/Californi...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9067380/#!po=28...

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The site you linked estimates 60,000 cancer deaths in California this year, I would assume it's safe to assume what the eventual prognosis was for those cases. Nearly 10,000 of them from lung cancer, and over 5,000 from colorectal cancer. If those are your examples of cancers with unpleasant end of life experiences and less than 500 people in the state used MAID, then it would seem as though thousands are suffering. Though I don't know how liberal your hospice system is with morphine & fentanyl.

Why though? Not a loaded question genuinely curious. More smoking up north?

Lung cancer == smoking.

Colorectal is significantly effected by diet, physical activity and obesity.

Don’t forget screening.

Colorectal is an interesting case as we are already at a place where, by using current screening techniques in a well targeted manner we could essentially eliminate it.

As such, different approaches, or funding, or attitudes to screening could also lead to big disparities in incidence and ultimately survival.

From a quick search, it seems to be due the Radon gas.

Exposure to Radon is the #1 cause of lung cancer on non-smoker. Canada ranks third on indoor radon concentration worldwide.

I only learned about this when buying a house and the inspector asking if I wanted to pay to have the test done. It came back positive and I disclosed the results to the seller, and in my state it requires them to mitigate before selling. My second house already had a system installed, but we also sleep on a second floor. I have always wondered how good the mitigation is; is Canada behind on public safety of this issue? Are Radon-related cancers on par in states with more regulation/mitigation?

I can recommend Airthings Wave. It’s a useful product to have around.

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