The Bloomberg article mis-interprets the scientific article. In effect, the scientific article shows how we could predict which tissues are most likely to beco

The Bloomberg article mis-interprets the scientific article. In effect, the scientific article shows how we could predict which tissues are most likely to become cancerous if we had no population statistics on cancer. That is, we could look at the rate of cell divisions in a tissue and say "Oh yeah, divisions occur frequently here, so there are going to be more cancers in this particular type of tissue." The scientific article does NOT say that the cancer which has arisen in random person X is mostly due to "bad luck" in person X. If person X smokes 4 packs of cigarettes per day, the person's risk of lung cancer is certainly affected. Of course, there is still some element of luck (not every heavy smoker gets lung cancer), but you can think of it like using loaded dice at the time of each DNA replication... loaded dice don't turn up snake eyes every time, but they certainly change the odds, and if you were playing craps there is no way you would want to use loaded dice. My reaction to the scientific article is... yawn. The result could have been predicted. Cancer is a disease of DNA replication. It makes sense that clinical problems arising from DNA replication would occur most often in places having the most DNA replication events. But it's nice to have experimental verification.