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It's not clear from the article but animals can generally live quite a bit longer than you'd expect if they continue to grow for their entire life, which is tru
by Symmetry 3y ago
It's not clear from the article but animals can generally live quite a bit longer than you'd expect if they continue to grow for their entire life, which is true for some types of fish. Gunk that builds up inside or between cells gets redistributed over larger areas, as do cells that become senescent. And larger size means more space for memory T cells. Those are only some aspects of aging of course.
- thfuran 3y agoDon't cancer rates tend to correlate positively with number of cells?
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoNot for whales so YMMV.
- thfuran 3y agoIt's not consistent across species because different species have different mechanisms for averting tumor growth. But within species (certainly among humans, and I'm pretty sure also among others), more cells means more opportunities for something to go wrong and so more cancer.
- feedsmgmt 3y agoIsn't that because the ocean water blocks radiation?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hackernewds 3y agoas one cause of cancer. there are many others.
- wongarsu 3y agoYes, but the bigger you are the bigger the tumor has to be to notably impact your health.
- jb1991 3y agoNo; elephants are a good example of animals with relatively low cancer rates.
- agumonkey 3y agoso it's a matter of density (which is probably what grandparent was hinting at)
- a_bonobo 3y agoIt might be a matter of cell count still, elephants have many extra copies of p53, one of the main cancer-suppressant genes. We have one copy, elephants have 20. So the linear correlation may still be there if you'd remove those extra copies. https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2023/08/12/can-elephants-get-cancer/#:~:text=Every%20cell%20in%20an%20African,won't%20even%20respond%20to https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2023/08/12/can-elephants-g....
- protomolecule 3y agoQuoting wiki [0]: "Peto's paradox is the observation that, at the species level, the incidence of cancer does not appear to correlate with the number of cells in an organism. For example, the incidence of cancer in humans is much higher than the incidence of cancer in whales, despite whales having more cells than humans. If the probability of carcinogenesis were constant across cells, one would expect whales to have a higher incidence of cancer than humans. Peto's paradox is named after English statistician and epidemiologist Richard Peto, who first observed the connection." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peto%27s_paradox
- thfuran 3y agoQuoting a bit more topically from the same article: >Within members of the same species, cancer risk and body size appear to be positively correlated, even once other risk factors are controlled for.
- DougWebb 3y agoSo, getting fatter as I get older is a good thing? /s
- bloomingeek 3y agoGood morning to you, sir!