4 ms·

Something is going very wrong with American cancer rates, especially since the 90s. Just look at this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence

Something is going very wrong with American cancer rates, especially since the 90s. Just look at this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~African+Region+%28WHO%29~European+Region+%28WHO%29~WHO_SEAR~WHO_WPAC~WHO_EMR~USA~KOR~FRA~DEU~BRA~CAN~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char... There's no obvious correlation here, because when you look at things like obesity, other countries had similar increases with no effect on the cancer rate. One outlier use of "mainly the US since 90s" is GMO use, but I don't believe there's much scientific proof of cause there. PFAS? Any other guesses?

lm28469 2y ago
Lots of things the US allow in food are banned in the rest of the world, not sure how much of an impact it has though
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  Ya, a start might be the list that California just banned in 2027: brominated vegetable oil, propylparaben, Red No. 3 (erythrosine), and potassium bromate. The FDA just revoked brominated vegetable oil use this month (hello every Mountain Dew you drank). All have been implicated as carcinogens and mostly been banned elsewhere around the world, many since 50 years ago. How have they let industrial poisons in our food so long when everyone else knows better?
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Just like raw milk, there's a libertarian faction that demands to be allowed to drink the poison.
    - ifyoubuildit 2y ago
      Is raw milk somehow equivalent to these things? Those crazy libertarians.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        The point is, if the US gov says "X is poisonous", there is currently a significant amount of Americans that loudly and aggressively claim, with the support of several actual politicians, that such a statement MUST mean that X is actually good for you and the evil government is trying to actively kill you <for handwave reasons, usually because it's evil>, so consume as much X as possible.
        ifyoubuildit 2y ago
        I'm sorry those people upset you. Even though I'm not a libertarian, I can't help but engage when people invoke them in threads that had nothing to do with libertarians, with some nonsense like raw milk is poison and libertarians demand access to it. Its so weird to me how people make it a hobby of doing that, especially when the whole libertarian thing is minding your own business. Why hate those people?
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        >especially when the whole libertarian thing is minding your own business. Because the vast majority of people who SAY they are Libertarian, are very much not libertarian. They also want to deconstruct a functioning government for ideological reasons, regardless of who that will hurt.
    - mythrwy 2y ago
      I don't know man, we had a milk cow when I was a kid and I grew up drinking raw milk. We just strained it through cheesecloth and put it in the fridge. I'm still here and don't recall any kind of sickness other then getting kicked by a cow one time. I suppose mixing raw milk in bulk might result in the spread of pathogens. Not really an expert on the topic, other then I'm pretty sure raw milk isn't necessarily poison.
      - reducesuffering 2y ago
        Raw milk always has these anecdotes about their local cow. And ya, if you’re getting it from down the street, there’s much less chance of pathogens and I don’t believe governments ever care about banning that. That’s why the most common US state law is legal from a farm but not retail. The actual conflict is about the 99% of people without access to a local cow but wanting to buy it at a grocery store. That distribution method doesn’t seem to have the timeline or rigor to ensure that raw milks integrity.
  - refurb 2y ago
    Ehh..a lot of thing are “implicated as carcinogens”, it doesn’t mean they are. Coffee contains 20 known carcinogens but I don’t see a lot of people voluntarily stop drinking it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4933506/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4933506/ And large studies of coffee drinkers don’t actually find higher rates of cancer.
    - lm28469 2y ago
      > Ehh..a lot of thing are “implicated as carcinogens”, it doesn’t mean they are. Well it's worth asking the question though, if only 1% of these suspected carcinogens truly are carcinogens, or act in combination as carcinogens you potentially have hundred thousands of cancers caused by things as dumb as "colorant to make the chips red" or "oil that's 1% cheaper than the healthy alternative". The vast majority of cancers are lifestyle related so if you can eat clean, exercise every day, be lean, avoid pollutants, avoid diet (known and suspected) carcinogens you improves your odds quite a lot. Coffee has been around forever so the good thing is that you can rule it out as a cause of new unexplained rises. What hasn't been around forever are 900cal starbucks "coffee" with three times the daily recommended daily amount of sugar for example. Another thing is that we spray virtually all our crops with chemicals having a skull, a dead fish and a cancer sign on the bottle
      - refurb 2y ago
        But you're missing the point - people get worked up about things that "might be carcinogenic" like food dye, but then willingly ingest something we know are carcinogenic.
klik99 2y ago
What's happening from 1995-2000? A lot of people are mentioning obesity being a contributing factor but that dip doesn't correlate with obesity rates: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-as-obese?tab=chart&country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-a...
vegasje 2y ago
Could this be reflective of which countries screen the most? Looking at the regions with the lowest cancer incidence on the chart, it makes me think it could.

lm28469 2y ago

Lots of things the US allow in food are banned in the rest of the world, not sure how much of an impact it has though

reducesuffering 2y ago
Ya, a start might be the list that California just banned in 2027: brominated vegetable oil, propylparaben, Red No. 3 (erythrosine), and potassium bromate. The FDA just revoked brominated vegetable oil use this month (hello every Mountain Dew you drank). All have been implicated as carcinogens and mostly been banned elsewhere around the world, many since 50 years ago. How have they let industrial poisons in our food so long when everyone else knows better?
- pjc50 2y ago
  Just like raw milk, there's a libertarian faction that demands to be allowed to drink the poison.
  - ifyoubuildit 2y ago
    Is raw milk somehow equivalent to these things? Those crazy libertarians.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      The point is, if the US gov says "X is poisonous", there is currently a significant amount of Americans that loudly and aggressively claim, with the support of several actual politicians, that such a statement MUST mean that X is actually good for you and the evil government is trying to actively kill you <for handwave reasons, usually because it's evil>, so consume as much X as possible.
      - ifyoubuildit 2y ago
        I'm sorry those people upset you. Even though I'm not a libertarian, I can't help but engage when people invoke them in threads that had nothing to do with libertarians, with some nonsense like raw milk is poison and libertarians demand access to it. Its so weird to me how people make it a hobby of doing that, especially when the whole libertarian thing is minding your own business. Why hate those people?
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        >especially when the whole libertarian thing is minding your own business. Because the vast majority of people who SAY they are Libertarian, are very much not libertarian. They also want to deconstruct a functioning government for ideological reasons, regardless of who that will hurt.
  - mythrwy 2y ago
    I don't know man, we had a milk cow when I was a kid and I grew up drinking raw milk. We just strained it through cheesecloth and put it in the fridge. I'm still here and don't recall any kind of sickness other then getting kicked by a cow one time. I suppose mixing raw milk in bulk might result in the spread of pathogens. Not really an expert on the topic, other then I'm pretty sure raw milk isn't necessarily poison.
    - reducesuffering 2y ago
      Raw milk always has these anecdotes about their local cow. And ya, if you’re getting it from down the street, there’s much less chance of pathogens and I don’t believe governments ever care about banning that. That’s why the most common US state law is legal from a farm but not retail. The actual conflict is about the 99% of people without access to a local cow but wanting to buy it at a grocery store. That distribution method doesn’t seem to have the timeline or rigor to ensure that raw milks integrity.
- refurb 2y ago
  Ehh..a lot of thing are “implicated as carcinogens”, it doesn’t mean they are. Coffee contains 20 known carcinogens but I don’t see a lot of people voluntarily stop drinking it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4933506/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4933506/ And large studies of coffee drinkers don’t actually find higher rates of cancer.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > Ehh..a lot of thing are “implicated as carcinogens”, it doesn’t mean they are. Well it's worth asking the question though, if only 1% of these suspected carcinogens truly are carcinogens, or act in combination as carcinogens you potentially have hundred thousands of cancers caused by things as dumb as "colorant to make the chips red" or "oil that's 1% cheaper than the healthy alternative". The vast majority of cancers are lifestyle related so if you can eat clean, exercise every day, be lean, avoid pollutants, avoid diet (known and suspected) carcinogens you improves your odds quite a lot. Coffee has been around forever so the good thing is that you can rule it out as a cause of new unexplained rises. What hasn't been around forever are 900cal starbucks "coffee" with three times the daily recommended daily amount of sugar for example. Another thing is that we spray virtually all our crops with chemicals having a skull, a dead fish and a cancer sign on the bottle
    - refurb 2y ago
      But you're missing the point - people get worked up about things that "might be carcinogenic" like food dye, but then willingly ingest something we know are carcinogenic.

klik99 2y ago

What's happening from 1995-2000? A lot of people are mentioning obesity being a contributing factor but that dip doesn't correlate with obesity rates: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-as-obese?tab=chart&country=~USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-a...

vegasje 2y ago

Could this be reflective of which countries screen the most? Looking at the regions with the lowest cancer incidence on the chart, it makes me think it could.