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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

I initial thought it was a weird coincidence that both him and Steve Jobs got pancreatic cancer. But then I checked and the lifetime risk of pancreatic cancer for a man is like 1:50, which is sort of insane:

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/pancreatic-cancer/about/...

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And working with certain chemicals can increase that a lot:

> Our meta-regression showed that pancreatic cancer risk increased by a 1% per-year increment in occupational exposure duration to chemical agents

Aside from the obvious incidences in rubber/plastics manufacturing, it's thought to hit pathologists especially hard from exposure to formaldehyde.

[0]https://academic.oup.com/occmed/article/73/4/211/7143670

When I lived in the Bay Area I was told there were some fucked up chemicals used in the production of PCBs that remained in the water from the valley's Golden Era (?). Perhaps there is something in the water then?

Depends on where in the Bay Area. SF gets water from Hetch Hetchy which is really clean. The rest of the peninsula is hit or miss. Some get water from reservoirs fed by the mountain streams which should be safe but anyone using groundwater from the Valley might be in danger.

http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20130404/in-search-of-...

Wait till you find out what the risk of Alzheimer’s is for someone over 100 years old. (Hint at 120 it’s currently estimated at around 100%)

It’s basically what disease is going to kill you first.

So I find efforts by Bryan Johnson to increase his lifespan pretty idiotic- he won’t be able to avoid the cancer and the Alzheimer’s risks as he ages - to my knowledge nothing In his routines is very effective against those.

> I find efforts by Bryan Johnson to increase his lifespan pretty idiotic- he won’t be able to avoid the cancer and the Alzheimer’s risks as he ages

At worst, he can be another data point. With enough of those, maybe someone will find a better treatment.

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