9 ms·

Cancer Is Striking More Young People, and Doctors Are Alarmed and Baffled

89 points by Leary 3y ago

astroid 3y ago
[flagged]
Leary 3y ago
https://archive.is/g2Pjm https://archive.is/g2Pjm
- willmadden 3y ago
  Thank you.
127361 3y ago
This and all the other food additives combined together, in our modern Western diet. Yes, discovered while trying to make an insecticide. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/a-chemical-found-in-common-artificial-sweetener-may-cause-dna-damage-cancer https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/a-chemical-found-i... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2023.2213903 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2023.2... Article about Sucralose: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/goings-on/sweet-nothings https://www.newyorker.com/culture/goings-on/sweet-nothings "Over the next year, Hough and Phadnis worked with the British sugar company Tate & Lyle to make more than a hundred chlorinated sugars, finally settling on one that had three chlorine atoms and was about six hundred times as sweet as sugar. “It isn’t of any use as an insecticide,” Hough told me recently. “That was tested.” But it has proved useful as a food. In its pure form, it is known as sucralose. When mixed with fillers and sold in bright-yellow sachets, it’s known as Splenda, the best-selling artificial sweetener in America."
- Justsignedup 3y ago
  just because they were combining chemicals to try to make an insecticide doesn't mean the chemical in and of itself is bad. However between the mass microplastics and a lot of recent food additive additions, and mass sugar, im sure there's something interesting going on. ALSO could be literally resiedue from pesticides used during farming. So lots of weirdness, tl;dr we need to invest a fuckton of money into research to find out the actual answer.
  - colechristensen 3y ago
    IIRC one strategy for insecticides is to entice them to eat things they can't get any energy out of to starve them. Like you could make an excellent completely nontoxic artificial sweetener that killed bugs by them stuffing themselves with it, thinking they're full, and dying of malnutrition.
    - Engineering-MD 3y ago
      You would need an awful lot of it over a rationally long period of time though. Also for humans seems to have the opposite effect if anything.
- wvenable 3y ago
  Wait till you find out the toxic elements that make up table salt!
  - 127361 3y ago
    Sucralose is an organochlorine compound, in the same class as PVC, pesticides and nerve agents.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      Chlorinated organic compounds are found in nearly every class of biomolecules and natural products including alkaloids, terpenes, amino acids, flavonoids, steroids, and fatty acids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organochlorine_chemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organochlorine_chemistry
      - 127361 3y ago
        When sucralose is heated above 120C (e.g. baked in an oven) it breaks down into harmful organochlorene compounds, such as Polychlorinated Biphenyls similar in toxicity to 2,3,7,8-TCDD. 2,3,7,8-TCDD is one of the most toxic dioxins known. https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/harmful-compounds-might-be-formed-when-foods-containing-the-sweetener-sucralose-are-heated.pdf https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/harmful-compounds-might-be-fo...
        wvenable 3y ago
        I don't understand the uncertainty of this whole article. "It is unclear on the one hand which toxic reaction products are generated in detail and in which quantities they are formed" Is a microscopic bit of harmful chemical going to do anything? We are exposed to lots of harmful chemicals all the time. Even our cleaning products are harmful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison Admittedly I'm not going to go around boiling sucralose and drinking it but I'm also not going to give this much more thought either.
- xk_id 3y ago
  The majority of plant phytochemicals with properties that are beneficial to human health simply exist to protect plants against insects (i.e functionally they are poisonous insecticides). There is even a theory in pharmacology to explain this precise observation, called hormesis [1]. The type of reasoning you use that relies on the scary affective connotation of WORDS is not a meaningful way to draw scientific conclusions. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18543123/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18543123/
- latchkey 3y ago
  Boric acid is great for killing some kinds of ants, and it is in eyedrops.
crazymoka 3y ago
With all the garbage in the western food supply.... not surprised.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  It’s more a North American problem. Europe has far stricter food safety standards, whereas the U.S. lets corporations poison the population for profit.
  - alwa 3y ago
    Though the Europeans seem not to be exempt from the phenomenon at hand: as the article points out, the study found “a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe.”
  - loeg 3y ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-as-obese?tab=chart&region=Europe&country=~OWID_EUR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-a...
  - kube-system 3y ago
    Europe has different, but relatively similar, food safety standards. Some things are more "strict" on one side of the ocean, some are more "strict" on the other, and some are just different points of view with arguable benefit for either perspective. > U.S. lets corporations poison the population for profit. Europe is also quite well known for regulatory capture in the food industry. Industry and academic rankings for food safety put high income countries on both sides of the pond at the top of the rankings. Most of "food safety" is ensuring that foods don't have contaminants and a regulatory system that effectively ensures that.
  - olyjohn 3y ago
    I hear this all the time, but the more I countries I go to, the more I see the same trash foods in all the stores.
  - 3y ago
paulpauper 3y ago
obesity?
- qup 3y ago
  No, cancer
  - loeg 3y ago
    I assume GP is mentioning obesity because it is known to increase the risk of many kinds of cancer and has risen over the time period.
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    ↑ obesity → ↑ chronic general inflammation → ↑ cancer risk These two effects are widely known and the transitive property is clear. The first google result of a NIH study has ~4-8% of all cancers being directly attributed to obesity which is a lot and could well be an underestimate given the difficulty of attribution. Many cancers that have a clear genetic trigger may have been prevented or at least delayed by an immune system that wasn't impaired by obesity.
Proven 3y ago
[dead]
neovialogistics 3y ago
Does the change in incidence rate predate 2020?
- ramoz 3y ago
  The referenced studies, data, and overall trend all predate 2020
- chrisatthestudy 3y ago
  Yes. From the article: "Cancer is hitting more young people in the U.S. and around the globe, baffling doctors. Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show."
- Clent 3y ago
  There is a graph that's rate of change, as opposed to rate of occurrence. Rate of change was already climbing through the 80's along with the other age groups, then dipped in the early 90's for about 10 years and then started climbing again for the age range 15-39 while the older age ranges decreased. That would lead me to believe any environmental cause has been around for a while and it's likely that all the focus has been on screening 40+ and not enough screening for those under 40.
  - Qem 3y ago
    > Rate of change was already climbing through the 80's along with the other age groups. Wonder if this older spike follows the period when the industry started bottling softdrinks in plastic instead of glass.
cpr 3y ago
Yes, they're alarmed and baffled because they aren't allowed to talk about the entirely obvious cause.
- loeg 3y ago
  Increased testing => increased finding? Or increasing obesity? I don't think either subject is verboten.
- smallmouth 3y ago
  Yeah, but I don't think it has anything to do with the introduction/production of foreign proteins in the body by way of a genetic process delivered by and within a highly toxic lipid nanoparticle.
- pixxel 3y ago
  They really aren’t. Even the comments here involved a long scroll to get to a hint of the unmentionable possibility.
damnesian 3y ago
Microplastics in every cell in our bodies, more and more food is made of lab chemical non-food substances. These are not controversial ideas. why is this baffling doctors again? But let's talk about the things that are controversial, but really shouldn't be. Pesticides are carcinogenic. Landmark cases are making headlines but quickly sinking below the radar. Meat and diary consumption, despite the drum beat of evidence and recommendations, is accelerating at a rate that even experts find alarming. These foods are known carcinogens. I went to a trendy bar recently and their bloody mary has skewers of smoked sausage and bacon. Sure, on one hand, yummm, bacon. On the other hand, there are whole continents of data proving without a doubt these foods cause cancer.
- bruce343434 3y ago
  So, from the tone of your message I infer the following opinions of yours - We shouldn't eat chemical non-food (whatever that means) - We shouldn't eat meat and diary So then how do you get a balanced diet? "Chemical" non-food supplements? Expensive (both ecological, and for my personal wallet) vegan options such as nuts?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - cko 3y ago
    These sorts of submissions are sure to attract armchair nutritionists and epidemiologists. Judging by the comments so far, they've predictably come in droves.
    - armada651 3y ago
      What always bothers me is that HN immediately starts discussing these submission as if it were a personal responsibility issue rather than a public health issue. You're not even going to make a dent in these cancer numbers by appealing to people's personal responsibility to follow a healthier diet.
  - bodiekane 3y ago
sniperjoe360 3y ago
As an oncologist, the cause is unknown. But it's not so simple to point fingers at one cause. For example someone who is a heavy smoker (ie. a pack a day) gets cancer at a rate of 25% in their lifetime should they live to age 80. It's a delicate interplay between genetics, development, and environment. We should identify all modifiable risk factors and change our behavior to reduce exposure to them.
- natch 3y ago
  What are some things that are known to be uncorrelated if any?
- ElectronCharge 3y ago
  A 2022 study claims that a combination of vitamin D supplements, Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, and (mild/moderate) exercise reduces cancer risk by 60% or so for older adults, but the same factors apply to young people as well. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9261319/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9261319/ I could easily believe that lack of sunlight (vitamin D) and exercise accounts for almost all of the observed increase. Screen-associated pastimes strike again!
  - thomond 3y ago
    > lack of sunlight Might be actually too much if the increase is caused by skin cancers.
    - ElectronCharge 3y ago
      If you read the article, you’ll find there is zero mention of skin cancer, it’s mainly concerned with GI tract, liver and kidney cancers.
  - abracadaniel 3y ago
    It seems that many (maybe most) cancers are kicked off by inflammation, or otherwise stressed tissues, after the conditions are just right (genetics, carcinogen, or otherwise damaged dna). Cells that are damaged enough to spread as cancer can avoid getting replicated for years or even never without a trigger. So, it could be that we aren't more exposed to carcinogens, but more frequently encounter the conditions that make the damaged cells start spreading. So, vitamin-D and Omega-3 could indeed help in that regard, and some other cause of chronic inflammation could be responsible for the upward trend.
prh8 3y ago
Baffled, lol. Micro plastics, hormones, preservatives, the capitalization of food production (food "product"). What is sold in major American grocery stores barely classifies as food. Americans are being poisoned by the food we eat, how it's produced, packaged, distributed. The only people baffled by it are those old enough that they were raised on actual food and don't understand what has happened the last few decades.
- supportengineer 3y ago
  The secret to healthy grocery store shopping is to only shop around the outside edges of the store.
  - prh8 3y ago
    Even then it's difficult in major chains. Better to find local/boutique shops like Natural Grocer, Sprouts, if those are available.
timr 3y ago
> Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show. A study in BMJ Oncology last year reported a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe. This is a relatively small increase over ~25 years. How much of it is due to cases like the highlighted one (which is tragic, but clearly driven by symptoms), vs increased screening? The US "standard" age for colonoscopy, for example, was recently dropped from 50 to 45...without really good evidence (essentially, just "updated models") [1]. This inevitably leads to higher rates of false positives in younger people. Over-treatment is a real risk in places like the US, where there are financial incentives to treat. [1] old guidelines: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/colorectal-cancer-screening-2002 https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recomme... new guidelines: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/colorectal-cancer-screening https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recomme...
- glimshe 3y ago
  One alternative to colonoscopy at 45 that is widely used outside the US are FIT tests. They go for $30 on Amazon (and around $80 for Labcorp) and they are much cheaper and incomparably less time consuming than a colonoscopy. The idea is that you only go for a colonoscopy under 50 (and some even say 55) if the FIT test comes positive. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and this is not medical advice.
  - irdc 3y ago
    Note that this works well in the case of colon cancer because it has a slowly-progressing prodromal stage in the form of polyps whose weak blood vessels cause tiny amounts of blood loss into the stool.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    One side effect (heh) of those, at least in the US: If my doctor orders a colonoscopy, then the insurance covers it. But if he orders one of these tests and it indicates that I need a colonoscopy, then I pay for the colonoscopy. Note that this may vary, depending on your insurance...
kingstoned 3y ago
[flagged]
donutdan4114 3y ago
The more I’ve learned over the years about health has now lead me down the path to practice periods of fasting. Anyone trying to eat a perfect Whole Foods diet may also still consume the occasional garbage food. I feel like fasting is a missing tool in the toolbox we don’t hear about enough. Doing periods of 2 to 5 day fasts just seems to kind of reset things. Give organs a break that would otherwise never have a break. Many benefits to speak of.. But excited to see what the science shows in the coming decades. There just seems to be something inherently natural feeling about feast and fast. Human ancestors were probably not eating 3 good size meals every single day forever without EVER giving there systems a break. The body seems to benefit from having a break from the constant toxin ingestion.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  > Give organs a break that would otherwise never have a break. Do organs benefit from having a break?
  - MeImCounting 3y ago
    NO they dont. This is wrong and dangerous. Fasting puts extra stress on your organs.
  - bgandrew 3y ago
    I'm also wandering. My organ is having a really long break these days, not sure if it's even healthy.
  - wredue 3y ago
    I found this, although I am not asserting that the author is an authority, nor asserting any credence: https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/fasting-can-heal-the-human-organism-of-disease-and-reverse-the-ageing-process-11647.html#:~:text=The%20abstinence%20of%20food%20affords,and%20tissue%2C%20absorb%20effusions%20and https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/fasting-can-heal-th... The national library of medicine isn’t quite as extreme as the suggest that certain cancers are prevented, but does indicate support of fasting having positive outcomes for human systems: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534877/#:~:text=Most%20glycogen%20is%20stored%20in,adipose%20tissue%20and%20protein%20stores https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534877/#:~:text=Most%2.... A comment below states some cancers risks have a great increase from obesity, so the claim of intermittent fasting reducing cancer risk may to have some credence.
maherbeg 3y ago
Interesting that colorectal, kidney and stomach cancers are some of the largest increases which could point to something in the food supply. It's surprising that the rates increased in Western Europe that also have more stringent standards on food additives. This could mean something wide spread like microplastics rather than food dyes.
- JauntTrooper 3y ago
  Or something protective that's declining. I wonder what the rates of dietary fiber consumption look like over the last few decades.
  - hooverd 3y ago
    Low! Given the prevalence of anecdotes about Taco Bell.
- walterbell 3y ago
  With mobile phones being used more for social/texting than calling, where are they commonly being worn on the human body? https://www.ewg.org/research/ewgs-guide-safer-cell-phone-use https://www.ewg.org/research/ewgs-guide-safer-cell-phone-use
- robocat 3y ago
  > also have more stringent standards on food additives It is hard to measure how cancerous a substance is. Standards seem to be quite porous for a variety of reasons. For example existing allowed substances that get withdrawn indicate that the standards are imprecise.
auggierose 3y ago
It's just that making people sick pays much better than keeping them healthy. It's the economy, stupid.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  More like making people sick is an economic externality. The worst case scenario is a class action lawsuit years after the C-suite has cashed out and whatever income was left to the company coffers has already accrued gains from investments. Even then all one has to do is create a subsidiary to inherit the lawsuit and declare bankruptcy. I agree with you, though. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the people dumping chemicals everywhere are investing in oncology pharmaceuticals while they wait for the class actions. They know what they're causing.
  - auggierose 3y ago
    Does too much sugar in food lead to class action lawsuits?
marsven_422 3y ago
[dead]
narrator 3y ago
Igg4 class switch. If you don't already know what that means, don't look it up.
NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago
"DOCTORS BAFFLED" - It's not that they are baffled, they know what's going on. They just can't say anything about it due to politics.
- verall 3y ago
  Are you in the know here? Want to fill us in?
  - marfil 3y ago
    No, the ignorant live in a delusion and can't explain their conspiracy theories.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Why? Are microplastics bipartisan now?
- hooverd 3y ago
  [flagged]
photochemsyn 3y ago
If there was any real desire to understand causes, comprehensive yearly body burden screening for industrial, agricultural, and food additives as a standard medical practice. Then look to see if there's any strong correlations with cancer in young people. See this from 2001: https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html > "...samples of Bill Moyers' blood and urine were analyzed. Eighty-four distinct chemicals were found. His test results – much like a chemical fingerprint – revealed evidence of hazardous chemicals in common use – as well as compounds banned for more than a quarter century – and others so obscure that almost no public information is available to identify what products might have resulted in Moyers' exposure." As far as why such an obvious program isn't being carried out, it's because politicians wouldn't fund it due to lobbying pressure by the guilty parties. I don't think even the East Palestine victims of the train bomb that was set off there are getting regular body burden screens right now, for example.
- robocat 3y ago
  > As far as why such an obvious program isn't being carried out, it's because politicians Occam's razor: perhaps simply because the idea can't work. "Eighty-four distinct chemicals" - so what? There is already an uncountable number of man-made chemicals yet we are not all dieing of cancer at grossly accelerated rates beyond what's natural. Weak signals are hard to find in noisy data. BBQed food is carcinogenic - does that mean we should ban the uncountable number of chemicals caused by a BBQ?
  - photochemsyn 3y ago
    Well, maybe 95% of those 84 persistent chemicals are harmless - but if gastrointestinal cancer cases in young people consistently correlated with the other 5%, then you know where the problem lies. It's a pretty straightforward approach, and while testing labs cost money, at scale it would be a relatively minor cost.
throwbadubadu 3y ago
Someone here wrote "dysgenic breeding and medical progression" and was immediately so heavily downvoted that he removed that comment quickly. Breeding sounds horrible, and I first needed to google dysgenic, which really makes that term even worse.. but still I wondered not only once: We as civilization with our medical advances (about that I am totally happy) remove or at least change selection pressure, so isn't it inevitable that we partly also "downgrade"? Further, given an illness that kills with lets say 50%, and that is influenced also by genetics: If we can now cure that, so make more people survive and reproduce with this, while factors and genetics stay: isn't it expected we may see this illness raise in the population? Really seriously interested about answers.. there must be a way to properly discuss this? What's the right terms for this? (Besides personally, my gut reaction would also be that change of environment and our lifestyle here is likely most significant factor).
- dehrmann 3y ago
  On one hand, modern medicine has just put human genetics and fitness at a standstill. On the other, infectious diseases we face have not been standing still.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  In general, there are going to be a lot more people reproducing successfully now than compared to a thousand years ago, let alone ten thousand years ago, and some of those people may have genes that would be disadvantageous in a more cut-throat environment that kills a lot of people before they hit breeding age. I can't really say that scans as a plausible major causal contribution to various digestive tract cancers going from 5 per 100,000 to 6 per 100,000 before age 50 from 1990 to 2019. The proposition that any meaningful environmental pressure selected against genes that might cause you to die at 45 instead of 55 doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That is well beyond peak breeding age. These people's ancestors were always susceptible to cancer, but they either didn't live long enough to get it or environmental contaminants that actually trigger the susceptibility were not present. Now they are.
- disharko 3y ago
  I think it would be fairly easy to find evidence of directly linked survival -> passing on risk. There haven't been so many generations with modern (cancer) medicine that you couldn't trace whether many folks getting cancer young had recent ancestors who survived getting cancer young because of modern medicine. On the other hand, if there's significant overlap between all the historical causes of infant/small child mortality that we've eliminated over centuries, and susceptibility to early cancer, that would be much harder to identify.
Wonnk13 3y ago
35 y/o male with stage 4 colon cancer here. You can creep my past comments on this site. Hopefully I can get down to MDAnderson for some clinical trials later this year. I don't buy the "we're just better at detecting it" argument entirely. No millenial is getting routine colonoscopies. I don't know what the solutions are, but I hope they come pretty fucking quick.
DaveYoakum 3y ago
I can't read the article because of the paywall, but as someone diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at 36, please fight to get screened if you show any of the symptoms. For me, it felt like IBS in the beginning. Don't end up like me.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
Many people blaming the usual suspects: microplastics and general pollution. These things no doubt contribute significantly. Sedentism is likely another cause. Seems kids are more sedentary these days. Sitting still and consuming phone/video entertainment. But another, perhaps even more serious suspect: stress & depression. It's unbelievable just how physically damaging emotional stress can be. I think that people want to stay baffled and stay blaming material exogenous causes, rather than look at themselves, their culture, and what they're doing (and not doing) to their youth. Increasing surveillance & "safety" culture. Talk of rights, but not responsbilities, not purpose. Abandonment of religion and the deep traditional values, purpose. The massive increase in population and competition. Pressure to work hard and earn. But no matter how much you do, how hard you work, you'll still never be able to afford that house. You're just living to support the elderly, the lucker generations. Feels just like being born into servitude. No dreams to follow, no passions, even simple ones, like just wanting a place to live and a family. Can't even have that. We see our futures, and it's grim. We're resigned to the grim darkness, and our bodies resigns with us.
- robocat 3y ago
  > microplastics things no doubt contribute significantly. Where do you get this "no doubt" from. Can you point to a paper showing microplastics are relevant to cancer? microplastics is just a boogyman word - a placeholder for modern-day fear - no different from 5G. The word du-jour changes over the decades (think back to whatever was feared when you were younger).
orangesite 3y ago
We can make jokes and theorize all we like but https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler continues to enjoy his permanent residency in our supply chains. Maybe evicting him won't solve all the issues but, given past outcomes, we may be surprised just how many it does? …and maybe, we're getting tired of occupying a position where we need to exhaustively refute Dibbler every time he makes a claim about the crap he's selling?
Magi604 3y ago
What is the most effective and cost/time efficient method of detecting cancers? I'm thinking some sort of general blood test that looks for a wide variety of markers. I want to just get one of those every year like clockwork, the same way I have to do my taxes or regenerate my human skin, just so I don't get blindsided by some late stage diagnoses a few years down the road.
plastickpetrol 3y ago
Probably all those microplastics are playing a part in this.
renatt 3y ago
[flagged]
zeemass001 3y ago
Watch
zeemass001 3y ago
These "puzzled and alarmed" Doctors need to watch the Netflix documentaries: "What the Health" and "Game Changers". There are others too, including 'Forks and Knives". They will realize what the big pharma and animal products industries are up to.
zeemass001 3y ago
These "puzzled and alarmed" Doctors need to watch the Netflix documentaries: "What the Health" and "Game Changers". There are others too, including 'Forks and Knives". They will realize what the big pharma and animal products industries are up to. Plant-based diets save health and lives. Wish I knew this much earlier on.

89 points by Leary 3y ago

astroid 3y ago

[flagged]

Leary 3y ago

https://archive.is/g2Pjm https://archive.is/g2Pjm

willmadden 3y ago
Thank you.

127361 3y ago

This and all the other food additives combined together, in our modern Western diet. Yes, discovered while trying to make an insecticide. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/a-chemical-found-in-common-artificial-sweetener-may-cause-dna-damage-cancer https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/a-chemical-found-i... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2023.2213903 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2023.2... Article about Sucralose: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/goings-on/sweet-nothings https://www.newyorker.com/culture/goings-on/sweet-nothings "Over the next year, Hough and Phadnis worked with the British sugar company Tate & Lyle to make more than a hundred chlorinated sugars, finally settling on one that had three chlorine atoms and was about six hundred times as sweet as sugar. “It isn’t of any use as an insecticide,” Hough told me recently. “That was tested.” But it has proved useful as a food. In its pure form, it is known as sucralose. When mixed with fillers and sold in bright-yellow sachets, it’s known as Splenda, the best-selling artificial sweetener in America."

Justsignedup 3y ago
just because they were combining chemicals to try to make an insecticide doesn't mean the chemical in and of itself is bad. However between the mass microplastics and a lot of recent food additive additions, and mass sugar, im sure there's something interesting going on. ALSO could be literally resiedue from pesticides used during farming. So lots of weirdness, tl;dr we need to invest a fuckton of money into research to find out the actual answer.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  IIRC one strategy for insecticides is to entice them to eat things they can't get any energy out of to starve them. Like you could make an excellent completely nontoxic artificial sweetener that killed bugs by them stuffing themselves with it, thinking they're full, and dying of malnutrition.
  - Engineering-MD 3y ago
    You would need an awful lot of it over a rationally long period of time though. Also for humans seems to have the opposite effect if anything.
wvenable 3y ago
Wait till you find out the toxic elements that make up table salt!
- 127361 3y ago
  Sucralose is an organochlorine compound, in the same class as PVC, pesticides and nerve agents.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    Chlorinated organic compounds are found in nearly every class of biomolecules and natural products including alkaloids, terpenes, amino acids, flavonoids, steroids, and fatty acids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organochlorine_chemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organochlorine_chemistry
    - 127361 3y ago
      When sucralose is heated above 120C (e.g. baked in an oven) it breaks down into harmful organochlorene compounds, such as Polychlorinated Biphenyls similar in toxicity to 2,3,7,8-TCDD. 2,3,7,8-TCDD is one of the most toxic dioxins known. https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/harmful-compounds-might-be-formed-when-foods-containing-the-sweetener-sucralose-are-heated.pdf https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/harmful-compounds-might-be-fo...
      - wvenable 3y ago
        I don't understand the uncertainty of this whole article. "It is unclear on the one hand which toxic reaction products are generated in detail and in which quantities they are formed" Is a microscopic bit of harmful chemical going to do anything? We are exposed to lots of harmful chemicals all the time. Even our cleaning products are harmful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison Admittedly I'm not going to go around boiling sucralose and drinking it but I'm also not going to give this much more thought either.
xk_id 3y ago
The majority of plant phytochemicals with properties that are beneficial to human health simply exist to protect plants against insects (i.e functionally they are poisonous insecticides). There is even a theory in pharmacology to explain this precise observation, called hormesis [1]. The type of reasoning you use that relies on the scary affective connotation of WORDS is not a meaningful way to draw scientific conclusions. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18543123/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18543123/
latchkey 3y ago
Boric acid is great for killing some kinds of ants, and it is in eyedrops.

crazymoka 3y ago

With all the garbage in the western food supply.... not surprised.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
It’s more a North American problem. Europe has far stricter food safety standards, whereas the U.S. lets corporations poison the population for profit.
- alwa 3y ago
  Though the Europeans seem not to be exempt from the phenomenon at hand: as the article points out, the study found “a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe.”
- loeg 3y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-as-obese?tab=chart&region=Europe&country=~OWID_EUR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-a...
- kube-system 3y ago
  Europe has different, but relatively similar, food safety standards. Some things are more "strict" on one side of the ocean, some are more "strict" on the other, and some are just different points of view with arguable benefit for either perspective. > U.S. lets corporations poison the population for profit. Europe is also quite well known for regulatory capture in the food industry. Industry and academic rankings for food safety put high income countries on both sides of the pond at the top of the rankings. Most of "food safety" is ensuring that foods don't have contaminants and a regulatory system that effectively ensures that.
- olyjohn 3y ago
  I hear this all the time, but the more I countries I go to, the more I see the same trash foods in all the stores.
- 3y ago

paulpauper 3y ago

obesity?

qup 3y ago
No, cancer
- loeg 3y ago
  I assume GP is mentioning obesity because it is known to increase the risk of many kinds of cancer and has risen over the time period.
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  ↑ obesity → ↑ chronic general inflammation → ↑ cancer risk These two effects are widely known and the transitive property is clear. The first google result of a NIH study has ~4-8% of all cancers being directly attributed to obesity which is a lot and could well be an underestimate given the difficulty of attribution. Many cancers that have a clear genetic trigger may have been prevented or at least delayed by an immune system that wasn't impaired by obesity.

Proven 3y ago

[dead]

neovialogistics 3y ago

Does the change in incidence rate predate 2020?

ramoz 3y ago
The referenced studies, data, and overall trend all predate 2020
chrisatthestudy 3y ago
Yes. From the article: "Cancer is hitting more young people in the U.S. and around the globe, baffling doctors. Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show."
Clent 3y ago
There is a graph that's rate of change, as opposed to rate of occurrence. Rate of change was already climbing through the 80's along with the other age groups, then dipped in the early 90's for about 10 years and then started climbing again for the age range 15-39 while the older age ranges decreased. That would lead me to believe any environmental cause has been around for a while and it's likely that all the focus has been on screening 40+ and not enough screening for those under 40.
- Qem 3y ago
  > Rate of change was already climbing through the 80's along with the other age groups. Wonder if this older spike follows the period when the industry started bottling softdrinks in plastic instead of glass.

cpr 3y ago

Yes, they're alarmed and baffled because they aren't allowed to talk about the entirely obvious cause.

loeg 3y ago
Increased testing => increased finding? Or increasing obesity? I don't think either subject is verboten.
smallmouth 3y ago
Yeah, but I don't think it has anything to do with the introduction/production of foreign proteins in the body by way of a genetic process delivered by and within a highly toxic lipid nanoparticle.
pixxel 3y ago
They really aren’t. Even the comments here involved a long scroll to get to a hint of the unmentionable possibility.

damnesian 3y ago

Microplastics in every cell in our bodies, more and more food is made of lab chemical non-food substances. These are not controversial ideas. why is this baffling doctors again? But let's talk about the things that are controversial, but really shouldn't be. Pesticides are carcinogenic. Landmark cases are making headlines but quickly sinking below the radar. Meat and diary consumption, despite the drum beat of evidence and recommendations, is accelerating at a rate that even experts find alarming. These foods are known carcinogens. I went to a trendy bar recently and their bloody mary has skewers of smoked sausage and bacon. Sure, on one hand, yummm, bacon. On the other hand, there are whole continents of data proving without a doubt these foods cause cancer.

bruce343434 3y ago
So, from the tone of your message I infer the following opinions of yours - We shouldn't eat chemical non-food (whatever that means) - We shouldn't eat meat and diary So then how do you get a balanced diet? "Chemical" non-food supplements? Expensive (both ecological, and for my personal wallet) vegan options such as nuts?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cko 3y ago
  These sorts of submissions are sure to attract armchair nutritionists and epidemiologists. Judging by the comments so far, they've predictably come in droves.
  - armada651 3y ago
    What always bothers me is that HN immediately starts discussing these submission as if it were a personal responsibility issue rather than a public health issue. You're not even going to make a dent in these cancer numbers by appealing to people's personal responsibility to follow a healthier diet.
- bodiekane 3y ago

sniperjoe360 3y ago

As an oncologist, the cause is unknown. But it's not so simple to point fingers at one cause. For example someone who is a heavy smoker (ie. a pack a day) gets cancer at a rate of 25% in their lifetime should they live to age 80. It's a delicate interplay between genetics, development, and environment. We should identify all modifiable risk factors and change our behavior to reduce exposure to them.

natch 3y ago
What are some things that are known to be uncorrelated if any?
ElectronCharge 3y ago
A 2022 study claims that a combination of vitamin D supplements, Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, and (mild/moderate) exercise reduces cancer risk by 60% or so for older adults, but the same factors apply to young people as well. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9261319/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9261319/ I could easily believe that lack of sunlight (vitamin D) and exercise accounts for almost all of the observed increase. Screen-associated pastimes strike again!
- thomond 3y ago
  > lack of sunlight Might be actually too much if the increase is caused by skin cancers.
  - ElectronCharge 3y ago
    If you read the article, you’ll find there is zero mention of skin cancer, it’s mainly concerned with GI tract, liver and kidney cancers.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  It seems that many (maybe most) cancers are kicked off by inflammation, or otherwise stressed tissues, after the conditions are just right (genetics, carcinogen, or otherwise damaged dna). Cells that are damaged enough to spread as cancer can avoid getting replicated for years or even never without a trigger. So, it could be that we aren't more exposed to carcinogens, but more frequently encounter the conditions that make the damaged cells start spreading. So, vitamin-D and Omega-3 could indeed help in that regard, and some other cause of chronic inflammation could be responsible for the upward trend.

prh8 3y ago

Baffled, lol. Micro plastics, hormones, preservatives, the capitalization of food production (food "product"). What is sold in major American grocery stores barely classifies as food. Americans are being poisoned by the food we eat, how it's produced, packaged, distributed. The only people baffled by it are those old enough that they were raised on actual food and don't understand what has happened the last few decades.

supportengineer 3y ago
The secret to healthy grocery store shopping is to only shop around the outside edges of the store.
- prh8 3y ago
  Even then it's difficult in major chains. Better to find local/boutique shops like Natural Grocer, Sprouts, if those are available.

timr 3y ago

> Diagnosis rates in the U.S. rose in 2019 to 107.8 cases per 100,000 people under 50, up 12.8% from 95.6 in 2000, federal data show. A study in BMJ Oncology last year reported a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe. This is a relatively small increase over ~25 years. How much of it is due to cases like the highlighted one (which is tragic, but clearly driven by symptoms), vs increased screening? The US "standard" age for colonoscopy, for example, was recently dropped from 50 to 45...without really good evidence (essentially, just "updated models") [1]. This inevitably leads to higher rates of false positives in younger people. Over-treatment is a real risk in places like the US, where there are financial incentives to treat. [1] old guidelines: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/colorectal-cancer-screening-2002 https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recomme... new guidelines: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/colorectal-cancer-screening https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recomme...

glimshe 3y ago
One alternative to colonoscopy at 45 that is widely used outside the US are FIT tests. They go for $30 on Amazon (and around $80 for Labcorp) and they are much cheaper and incomparably less time consuming than a colonoscopy. The idea is that you only go for a colonoscopy under 50 (and some even say 55) if the FIT test comes positive. Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and this is not medical advice.
- irdc 3y ago
  Note that this works well in the case of colon cancer because it has a slowly-progressing prodromal stage in the form of polyps whose weak blood vessels cause tiny amounts of blood loss into the stool.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  One side effect (heh) of those, at least in the US: If my doctor orders a colonoscopy, then the insurance covers it. But if he orders one of these tests and it indicates that I need a colonoscopy, then I pay for the colonoscopy. Note that this may vary, depending on your insurance...

kingstoned 3y ago

[flagged]

donutdan4114 3y ago

The more I’ve learned over the years about health has now lead me down the path to practice periods of fasting. Anyone trying to eat a perfect Whole Foods diet may also still consume the occasional garbage food. I feel like fasting is a missing tool in the toolbox we don’t hear about enough. Doing periods of 2 to 5 day fasts just seems to kind of reset things. Give organs a break that would otherwise never have a break. Many benefits to speak of.. But excited to see what the science shows in the coming decades. There just seems to be something inherently natural feeling about feast and fast. Human ancestors were probably not eating 3 good size meals every single day forever without EVER giving there systems a break. The body seems to benefit from having a break from the constant toxin ingestion.

unsupp0rted 3y ago
> Give organs a break that would otherwise never have a break. Do organs benefit from having a break?
- MeImCounting 3y ago
  NO they dont. This is wrong and dangerous. Fasting puts extra stress on your organs.
- bgandrew 3y ago
  I'm also wandering. My organ is having a really long break these days, not sure if it's even healthy.
- wredue 3y ago
  I found this, although I am not asserting that the author is an authority, nor asserting any credence: https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/fasting-can-heal-the-human-organism-of-disease-and-reverse-the-ageing-process-11647.html#:~:text=The%20abstinence%20of%20food%20affords,and%20tissue%2C%20absorb%20effusions%20and https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/fasting-can-heal-th... The national library of medicine isn’t quite as extreme as the suggest that certain cancers are prevented, but does indicate support of fasting having positive outcomes for human systems: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534877/#:~:text=Most%20glycogen%20is%20stored%20in,adipose%20tissue%20and%20protein%20stores https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534877/#:~:text=Most%2.... A comment below states some cancers risks have a great increase from obesity, so the claim of intermittent fasting reducing cancer risk may to have some credence.

maherbeg 3y ago

Interesting that colorectal, kidney and stomach cancers are some of the largest increases which could point to something in the food supply. It's surprising that the rates increased in Western Europe that also have more stringent standards on food additives. This could mean something wide spread like microplastics rather than food dyes.

JauntTrooper 3y ago
Or something protective that's declining. I wonder what the rates of dietary fiber consumption look like over the last few decades.
- hooverd 3y ago
  Low! Given the prevalence of anecdotes about Taco Bell.
walterbell 3y ago
With mobile phones being used more for social/texting than calling, where are they commonly being worn on the human body? https://www.ewg.org/research/ewgs-guide-safer-cell-phone-use https://www.ewg.org/research/ewgs-guide-safer-cell-phone-use
robocat 3y ago
> also have more stringent standards on food additives It is hard to measure how cancerous a substance is. Standards seem to be quite porous for a variety of reasons. For example existing allowed substances that get withdrawn indicate that the standards are imprecise.

auggierose 3y ago

It's just that making people sick pays much better than keeping them healthy. It's the economy, stupid.

plagiarist 3y ago
More like making people sick is an economic externality. The worst case scenario is a class action lawsuit years after the C-suite has cashed out and whatever income was left to the company coffers has already accrued gains from investments. Even then all one has to do is create a subsidiary to inherit the lawsuit and declare bankruptcy. I agree with you, though. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the people dumping chemicals everywhere are investing in oncology pharmaceuticals while they wait for the class actions. They know what they're causing.
- auggierose 3y ago
  Does too much sugar in food lead to class action lawsuits?

marsven_422 3y ago

[dead]

narrator 3y ago

Igg4 class switch. If you don't already know what that means, don't look it up.

NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago

"DOCTORS BAFFLED" - It's not that they are baffled, they know what's going on. They just can't say anything about it due to politics.

verall 3y ago
Are you in the know here? Want to fill us in?
- marfil 3y ago
  No, the ignorant live in a delusion and can't explain their conspiracy theories.
plagiarist 3y ago
Why? Are microplastics bipartisan now?
hooverd 3y ago
[flagged]

photochemsyn 3y ago

If there was any real desire to understand causes, comprehensive yearly body burden screening for industrial, agricultural, and food additives as a standard medical practice. Then look to see if there's any strong correlations with cancer in young people. See this from 2001: https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html https://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/problem/bodyburden.html > "...samples of Bill Moyers' blood and urine were analyzed. Eighty-four distinct chemicals were found. His test results – much like a chemical fingerprint – revealed evidence of hazardous chemicals in common use – as well as compounds banned for more than a quarter century – and others so obscure that almost no public information is available to identify what products might have resulted in Moyers' exposure." As far as why such an obvious program isn't being carried out, it's because politicians wouldn't fund it due to lobbying pressure by the guilty parties. I don't think even the East Palestine victims of the train bomb that was set off there are getting regular body burden screens right now, for example.

robocat 3y ago
> As far as why such an obvious program isn't being carried out, it's because politicians Occam's razor: perhaps simply because the idea can't work. "Eighty-four distinct chemicals" - so what? There is already an uncountable number of man-made chemicals yet we are not all dieing of cancer at grossly accelerated rates beyond what's natural. Weak signals are hard to find in noisy data. BBQed food is carcinogenic - does that mean we should ban the uncountable number of chemicals caused by a BBQ?
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  Well, maybe 95% of those 84 persistent chemicals are harmless - but if gastrointestinal cancer cases in young people consistently correlated with the other 5%, then you know where the problem lies. It's a pretty straightforward approach, and while testing labs cost money, at scale it would be a relatively minor cost.

throwbadubadu 3y ago

Someone here wrote "dysgenic breeding and medical progression" and was immediately so heavily downvoted that he removed that comment quickly. Breeding sounds horrible, and I first needed to google dysgenic, which really makes that term even worse.. but still I wondered not only once: We as civilization with our medical advances (about that I am totally happy) remove or at least change selection pressure, so isn't it inevitable that we partly also "downgrade"? Further, given an illness that kills with lets say 50%, and that is influenced also by genetics: If we can now cure that, so make more people survive and reproduce with this, while factors and genetics stay: isn't it expected we may see this illness raise in the population? Really seriously interested about answers.. there must be a way to properly discuss this? What's the right terms for this? (Besides personally, my gut reaction would also be that change of environment and our lifestyle here is likely most significant factor).

dehrmann 3y ago
On one hand, modern medicine has just put human genetics and fitness at a standstill. On the other, infectious diseases we face have not been standing still.
nonameiguess 3y ago
In general, there are going to be a lot more people reproducing successfully now than compared to a thousand years ago, let alone ten thousand years ago, and some of those people may have genes that would be disadvantageous in a more cut-throat environment that kills a lot of people before they hit breeding age. I can't really say that scans as a plausible major causal contribution to various digestive tract cancers going from 5 per 100,000 to 6 per 100,000 before age 50 from 1990 to 2019. The proposition that any meaningful environmental pressure selected against genes that might cause you to die at 45 instead of 55 doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That is well beyond peak breeding age. These people's ancestors were always susceptible to cancer, but they either didn't live long enough to get it or environmental contaminants that actually trigger the susceptibility were not present. Now they are.
disharko 3y ago
I think it would be fairly easy to find evidence of directly linked survival -> passing on risk. There haven't been so many generations with modern (cancer) medicine that you couldn't trace whether many folks getting cancer young had recent ancestors who survived getting cancer young because of modern medicine. On the other hand, if there's significant overlap between all the historical causes of infant/small child mortality that we've eliminated over centuries, and susceptibility to early cancer, that would be much harder to identify.

Wonnk13 3y ago

35 y/o male with stage 4 colon cancer here. You can creep my past comments on this site. Hopefully I can get down to MDAnderson for some clinical trials later this year. I don't buy the "we're just better at detecting it" argument entirely. No millenial is getting routine colonoscopies. I don't know what the solutions are, but I hope they come pretty fucking quick.

DaveYoakum 3y ago

I can't read the article because of the paywall, but as someone diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at 36, please fight to get screened if you show any of the symptoms. For me, it felt like IBS in the beginning. Don't end up like me.

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

Many people blaming the usual suspects: microplastics and general pollution. These things no doubt contribute significantly. Sedentism is likely another cause. Seems kids are more sedentary these days. Sitting still and consuming phone/video entertainment. But another, perhaps even more serious suspect: stress & depression. It's unbelievable just how physically damaging emotional stress can be. I think that people want to stay baffled and stay blaming material exogenous causes, rather than look at themselves, their culture, and what they're doing (and not doing) to their youth. Increasing surveillance & "safety" culture. Talk of rights, but not responsbilities, not purpose. Abandonment of religion and the deep traditional values, purpose. The massive increase in population and competition. Pressure to work hard and earn. But no matter how much you do, how hard you work, you'll still never be able to afford that house. You're just living to support the elderly, the lucker generations. Feels just like being born into servitude. No dreams to follow, no passions, even simple ones, like just wanting a place to live and a family. Can't even have that. We see our futures, and it's grim. We're resigned to the grim darkness, and our bodies resigns with us.

robocat 3y ago
> microplastics things no doubt contribute significantly. Where do you get this "no doubt" from. Can you point to a paper showing microplastics are relevant to cancer? microplastics is just a boogyman word - a placeholder for modern-day fear - no different from 5G. The word du-jour changes over the decades (think back to whatever was feared when you were younger).

orangesite 3y ago

We can make jokes and theorize all we like but https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler continues to enjoy his permanent residency in our supply chains. Maybe evicting him won't solve all the issues but, given past outcomes, we may be surprised just how many it does? …and maybe, we're getting tired of occupying a position where we need to exhaustively refute Dibbler every time he makes a claim about the crap he's selling?

Magi604 3y ago

What is the most effective and cost/time efficient method of detecting cancers? I'm thinking some sort of general blood test that looks for a wide variety of markers. I want to just get one of those every year like clockwork, the same way I have to do my taxes or regenerate my human skin, just so I don't get blindsided by some late stage diagnoses a few years down the road.

plastickpetrol 3y ago

Probably all those microplastics are playing a part in this.

renatt 3y ago

[flagged]

zeemass001 3y ago

Watch

zeemass001 3y ago

These "puzzled and alarmed" Doctors need to watch the Netflix documentaries: "What the Health" and "Game Changers". There are others too, including 'Forks and Knives". They will realize what the big pharma and animal products industries are up to.

zeemass001 3y ago