Just 'bad luck' can't explain cancer!

Post date: Dec 17, 2015 3:27:11 PM

Cancer is not just from 'bad luck,' but is much more frequently related to environmental exposures, the ones that affect genomic integrity in some way...

Researchers from Stony Brook, New York have now estimated that from 70-90% of lifetime cancer risk is due to extrinsic factors, not just how many times a particular stem cell divides (as previously reported this year, and also discussed in AGiR! postings).

Of course, chance is always involved, but what you choose to do (or not) can prevent disease…

See the BBC summary about this report here. They have a good Russian roulette analogy...

There is also a chance that you can get online access to the actual article, thanks to nature.com's content sharing initiative! Specifically, they show (to quote the abstract) that "rates of endogenous mutation accumulation by intrinsic processes are not sufficient to account for the observed cancer risks."

Cancer prevention and public health in general could definitely benefit, if people act on these results!

Take care!