5 ms·
Scientists are discovering a powerful new way to prevent cancer
- Earw0rm 1y agoInteresting article challenging today's popular understanding of cancer genesis and development, and outlining the increasing understanding of the role inflammation plays in stimulating the growth of cancer cell populations.
- 3abiton 1y agoFrom my understanding it's still highly speculative though.
- Earw0rm 1y agoAsk a dairy farmer. Inflammation-mediated carcinogenesis is certainly a thing for some specific types. How much it's true across the board is speculative, but a lot of inflammation-related conditions also have association with higher cancer risk for the given body part.
- baxtr 1y agoI’m curious to know how dairy farmers are qualified to comment on cancer?
- scrollop 1y agoI predict that they would say: "There is no way dairy products can contribute to inflammation, cancer or anything bad for a person. Just ask the Milk Board!" On the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIPksx7XLzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIPksx7XLzk (it's a bit old though) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CRrI5U9HXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CRrI5U9HXU
- jama211 1y agoI’d rather ask the cancer research scientists.
- victorbjorklund 1y agohttps://archive.is/2025.09.11-083906/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/09/02/scientists-are-discovering-a-powerful-new-way-to-prevent-cancer https://archive.is/2025.09.11-083906/https://www.economist.c...
- adaptbrian 1y agoWarburg effect (oncology) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect_(oncology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect_(oncology)
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago"powerful new way" and "Around the 1920s, Otto Heinrich Warburg and his group concluded...", are you sure they're talking about that? Doesn't seem very new.
- crazygringo 1y agoWhy are you posting that? When it has zero connection to the article and you're giving zero explanation?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- adaptbrian 1y agoSee lambdabas comment right below this. This fella that I linked was the OG on this. Consider this further reading and potentially insightful in parallel to this article.
- lambdaba 1y ago> The discovery that chronic inflammation can provide the impetus for cancers to develop is forcing clinicians to rethink their approach to the disease’s prevention. Alternative health has been saying this for decades. Ketogenic diets + medicinal plants/mushrooms can do a lot, even after the fact.
- lomase 1y agoScientific health has also been saying it for decades.
- danielbln 1y agoAlternative health says a lot of things, many things unsubstantiated. The difficult part is figuring out what's true and what's quackery.
- dsr_ 1y ago[flagged]
- quesera 1y agoThis is inadequate. Alternative medicine is simply any therapy that is not included in the established currently-accepted set of treatment options. This varies by culture, time, and sometimes by individual. Most alternatives are not better than the currently-known best. This is true today, we think, but it is definitely not true historically. (So how special is our current era?) But when the currently-known best doesn't work well for everyone, or has deleterious side effects, any continued research will include alternatives. I understand the fatigue embedded in your quote. It's a reasonable stance for those of us with ordinary concerns and who are far downstream from the research (including and especially retail practitioners). But it is too broadly dismissive for real scientists and people who maintain a curiosity about the world.
- Workaccount2 1y ago>Most alternatives are not better than the currently-known best. I think a better way of phrasing this is "Most alternatives are no better than placebo".
- inglor_cz 1y agoI will again mention my favorite cancer champions, the bats. Bats very rarely get cancer (I tried to find the actual # of verified cases of cancers in bats, but came up short), and they have a lot of anti-cancer adaptations in their genome. They are also really good at taming inflammation and activity of various viruses. That helps them survive infection with rabies - their systems just don't react as aggresively to the infection as ours (and most mammals') do. This may help them against cancer as well. Not just p53 et al.
- mattmaroon 1y agoSo you’re saying if we just switch our diet to mosquitos we’ll all be fine?
- dsr_ 1y agoNo, but in 100-300 generations your descendants will be.
- al_borland 1y agoWhy would that be the case? Plenty of people have kids before getting cancer. How is it going to go away when it isn’t preventing reproduction?
- deadbabe 1y agoIf a person’s family has a history of cancer, do not reproduce with that person. Similarly, if your family has history of cancer, do not reproduce.
- al_borland 1y agoThat’s never going to happen at a population level, short of government backed eugenics.
- midnitewarrior 1y ago
- siva7 1y ago> This, says Dr Balmain, suggests that 80-90% of carcinogens which people are exposed to may not induce mutations. Tell me the 10% of which are dangerous so that i can avoid them
- dapperdrake 1y ago[flagged]
- azan_ 1y agoAll are dangerous, not all through mutagenesis though.
- jnord 1y agohttps://archive.md/vOR6x https://archive.md/vOR6x
- submeta 1y agoI’ve been reading a lot lately about the negative effects of inflammation. Recently, I came across an article arguing that it’s inflammation in the blood vessels (not cholesterol itself) that causes cardiovascular problems. Now this article blaming inflammation for cancer. But isn’t inflammation also a useful and necessary process in the body? If it’s so harmful, should we all be taking anti-inflammatory drugs? Of course, those have their own downsides too (my doctor mentioned that ibuprofen can even affect hearing).
- 7thaccount 1y agoI think some inflammation is natural and a response to infection, but when your entire diet and lifestyle lead to daily inflammation, I'm guessing it's really bad.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoIf inflammation weren't a trade-off, we'd have perpetual inflammation. That kind of thing is rapidly tweaked by evolution.
- baby 1y agoI remember reading this article on why muslim countries had low rate of cancers. Apparently it was the yearly month-long fast + all the spices that people ate daily (anti inflammatory)
- breppp 1y agoMy guess is underdeveloped health systems means less diagnosis
- Earw0rm 1y agoThey don't, as a rule, drink alcohol, which helps quite a bit for GI, breast and liver cancers. Wear modest clothing, cover themselves up from the sun. Although that can lead to Vit D deficiency when they move to high latitude countries. And they don't eat bacon, sausages, salami or other salt-cured pork products which are thought to promote some GI cancers due to the curing process forming nitrosamines.
- jszymborski 1y agoAs a person who studied cancer, I am probably not this article's audience. That said, I feel the need to point out that chronic inflammation has long been known to be one of the roots of cancer. Chronic inflammation can be caused by a few things but common among them is the immune system. The framing of the article, in my quick skim, felt like it was insinuating that researchers believed that cancer arises from mutations alone, and that everyone assumed carcinogens were all mutagens. I haven't read the paper this article is describing. It seems very interesting. But the headline and the article makes it seem like some major turning point or ground shift which IMHO it is not.
- mielioort 1y agoSo auto-immune diseases ( like arthritis and allergied) and chronic untreated diseases like lyme are the main suspects now?
- luciferin 1y agoI don't know about main suspect, but autoimmune disease has been known for a long time to increase your risk of cancer. I have Celiac disease, so an increased risk of stomache, intestinal and bowel cancer. Honestly, this article is kind of worrying for me, personally. I have many symptoms after two years of treatment with diet alone. Further evidence may eventually show treatment with antibiotics or steroids for people like me may lower more risks then it raises.
- baby 1y agoAs someone with both that sucks
- laughing_man 1y agoCancer has many different, simultaneous causes. That's why when people say "x causes cancer" what they mean is x (whatever it is) raises your odds of getting cancer by a measurable degree.
- baxtr 1y agoI don’t want to defend how they report. But for someone who hasn’t been involved in the field, something that’s widely accepted and well-known for a long time can seem “very new” to them.
- Tycho 1y agoDon’t think I’ve seen “discovering”, the present participle of the verb, used in a headline like this before.
- harvey9 1y agoI would like to live in a world where "Breaking News!" came from science labs instead of red carpets though.
- FollowingTheDao 1y agoDiscovery? HA! Traditional Chinese Medicine already knew the body cures cancer by boosting the immune system. Did they no how? Who cares? Harnessing the power of traditional Chinese medicine monomers and compound prescriptions to boost cancer immunotherapy https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10684919/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10684919/ Antitumor effects of immunity-enhancing traditional Chinese medicine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31710893/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31710893/ Edit: Please comment on what is wrong if you will downvote this because I am open to discussion and correction. Modern society only patents things that were already known and then makes them out of reach for the common man.
- freddealmeida 1y ago[flagged]
- jghn 1y agoCancer is not a singular disease. It's a class of diseases with many different causes.
- blondie9x 1y agoThis sounds like an application of ML. But we can't call it ML anymore right? Need to call it AI in the media whenever possible.
- jghn 1y agoML has been applied in cancer research for longer than ML has been in vogue
- dredmorbius 1y agoArticle appears to be a word: These non-mutagenic carcinogens instead seem to the body’s immune system. I suspect "seem to target" or "seem to trigger" was intended. (The Economist's editing is usually superb, this is a pretty glaring error.)
- gverrilla 1y agoSEO?
- arthurcolle 1y agoReport it
- arcastroe 1y agoArticle appears to be (missing) a word. I see what you did there.
- dredmorbius 1y agoCorrected in a subsequent A.T. capture, the missing word being "exploit": <https://archive.is/lY9ee#selection-1419.48-1419.55 https://archive.is/lY9ee#selection-1419.48-1419.55>
- tsoukase 1y agoCancer is a hard problem. It has deeper interconnected mechanisms long before any inflammation or observable change. Cancer is caused due to slow incremental addition of DNA mutations that lead to cell division control failure. This first step is intractable to reverse. All the next stages just lead to early or late diagnosis.
- teddy-smith 1y agoThis first step is intractable to reverse Why?
- tsoukase 1y agoBecause of the interplay between dozens of unknown regulating genes that effect in an obscure way the final decision to trigger the cell mitosis (division). Even if we ever uncover the whole cascade mechanism, how can we stop this monstrous process in everyone of the billion cells that are able to divide? We still have no idea of any drug, viral vector or DNA fragment that can intervene tissue wide.
- josvdwest 1y agoIs this related to chronic inflammation from glucose spikes?