BBC News - Cancer 'tidal wave' on horizon, warns WHO :
The WHO's World Cancer Report 2014 said the major sources of preventable cancer included:
  • Smoking
  • Infections
  • Alcohol
  • Obesity and inactivity
  • Radiation, both from the sun and medical scans
  • Air pollution and other environmental factors
  • Delayed parenthood, having fewer children and not breastfeeding.
That's quite a list.  Some of that is somewhat unavoidable, and the last 1.) I wonder if it's got its cause and effect down, and 2.) Even if it does, isn't that part of the culture that gives us the health care good enough to worry about living long enough for cancer to matter.

That is, I'd like to know how old the folks are who get cancer. Look, I want to get rid of early cancer.  But at some point... If you look at the BBC's graphic of where cancer is happening, it seems to correlate to the First World/capital/longer life expectancies fairly well, right?



I mean, let's face hard facts: We have to die of something, right?  If you live long enough, it's probably pretty likely cancer gets you.  I think we're learning what the end game looks like.  This doesn't mean it's not a good thing to stop smoking.  And you should stop reading and go for a run right now.  And we should spend serious resources fighting pollution.  But thank heavens so many of us can be worried about these issues, not death from childbirth, or malaria (or other disease), or from not having enough food, or...

What makes me wonder is what happens if we solve this one.  At some point, we begin to confound our own creation myths.

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