Thread

1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds

296 points · 158 comments · colinprince

toasty228 · 1790687453 · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.oatext.com/which-environment-makes-cancer.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.oatext.com/which-environment-makes-cancer.php
Always a good read, most cancers are environmental, and most of these are caused by obesity, bad diet and smoking/drinking, fix these four things in your life and you reduce your chances of getting cancer by 50%+
1. fabian2k · 1790695723 · focus · HN ↗
  That paper links a random blog post as source for these statistics (reference 9). That's a huge red flag for me and not what I'd expect in a scientific paper. I find the numbers wildly implausible in any case since they only have two categories: hereditary and environmental/lifestyle.
  Cancer is caused by random chance. Accumulate enough mutations of the right kind and you get it. Of course you can dramatically affect that chance through genetic factors and environmental ones.
  1. toasty228 · 1790697657 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah that's the "other" part in "environmental".
    > hereditary and environmental/lifestyle.
    Unless you can demonstrate supernatural causes these are the only two broad categories you need. It's either coming from inside (genes) or outside (diet, random neutrino bit flipping your shit, smoking, x-rays, etc.).
    fabian2k · 1790699623 · focus · HN ↗
    But a significant part of that is not something we can influence. Getting cancer is a side-effect of living. Our own metabolism causes DNA damage.
    There are other papers that attribute something like a third of cancers to the big environmental and lifestyle factors.
    toasty228 · 1790700794 · focus · HN ↗
    A significant part of the insignificant part yes, just don't be fat, don't drink and eat clean, that plays a much larger role than luck

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