> But a more telling reason for the rise is that humans, on average, live a lot longer than they used to. "If you live long enough you will get cancer," says Biankin.
I keep hearing this, but do we have data that shows that cancer rates have not changed within age groups?
Average lifespan is skewed by much higher infant mortality rates of the past: an average lifespan of 45 doesn't mean everybody was dropping dead at 45; it means more people were dying during their infancy and youth.
the professor mentions as an aside (there is a transcript of the talk)
> And what is interesting, if you take out the childhood mortality, the Victorian person between 1850 and 1880 lived slightly longer, if he was a male, than you do today.
Females had the risk if child birth, an area where medicine did do a lot.
It shows that sanitation/hygiene and food seem to have done a lot for lower mortality outside the risk factors of being very young and/or giving birth.
And that was before antibiotics! Which is nice to know when we get another doom article about the end of antibiotics, because it seems that while sure individuals will suffer it by no means warrants predictions of doom for mankind.
I keep hearing this, but do we have data that shows that cancer rates have not changed within age groups?
Average lifespan is skewed by much higher infant mortality rates of the past: an average lifespan of 45 doesn't mean everybody was dropping dead at 45; it means more people were dying during their infancy and youth.