Posted on 05/01/2021 6:48:47 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The first recorded accounts of cancer date back to Ancient Egypt more than 5,000 years ago. But it’s long been thought that cancer remained relatively rare in humans until modern times, in large part due to our longer lifespans. Other trends that began to emerge in the 18th century, like exposure to more environmental pollutants as industrialization expanded and the increased popularity of smoking, probably played a part, too.
But this new study, published Friday in the journal Cancer, suggests that cancer has been a regular feature of people’s lives for quite some time.
Researchers in the UK examined the skeletons of 143 people excavated from six medieval cemeteries located around the city of Cambridge; these people had died between the 6th and 16th centuries. They then analyzed the bones using medical imaging, looking closely for traces of advanced cancer that might not have appeared on the surface.
Most cancers start somewhere else in the body besides bone, but some of these soft-tissue tumors will then spread to a person’s bones, leaving behind lesions that can be spotted through medical imaging. Based on the amount of cancer the team found in these bones, they tried to extrapolate the baseline level of cancer among medieval people in the area.
“We think the total proportion of the medieval population that probably suffered with a cancer somewhere in their body was between 9-14%,” said study author Piers Mitchell, a researcher from Cambridge University’s Department of Archaeology, in a statement released by the university.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Most people didn’t live long enough to get it back then.
Who didn’t believe that cancer hasn’t plagued us for our entire existence?
People who think it’s mostly new due to our processed foods or industrial pollutants.
With only crude pain relievers it must have been a horrible way to die.
“Who didn’t believe that cancer hasn’t plagued us for our entire existence?”
This is more along my thinking too.
Who thought it was less than 5000 years old?
“...Longer Than We Thought...”
-
Who is “we”?
I disagree. If you survived the first 5 years of your life, you were likely to have a fairly long life.
Blood letting and leeches.
Stop with the fake news, it was Covid.
So now you had to reference the new Biden-Care? Just before I go to bed? Obamacare was bad enough.
I forgive you, though. The pandemic and all that.
Doctor: “You need to quit smoking, you know it could kill you.”
Me: “The Ancient Egyptians never smoked and ya don’t see any of them walking around right now, do ya?”
Doctor: 🤨
Yes. Great advances in medicine are coming!
You must follow the science, because the science is right.
Until the science is wrong. When that happens, it's not the "science" that got it wrong, it's "we" that got it wrong.
Kind of like how Watergate is the shame of Republicans, but the Japanese internment during WWII is the shame of Americans.
The agenda is pushed through every pore, ever aperture, at every opportunity. Rust — entropy — never sleeps.
I certainly never thought cancer was a disease that emerged only recently. Cancer is primarily a disease of imperfect information transfer, a disease caused by a less than infinite signal-to-noise ratio in the duplication of DNA strands and in the translation from DNA sequences to RNA sequences. I assumed that cancer has been a problem ever since DNA started to function in complex organisms. But the headline includes me in the problem, and I'm not part of the problem.
The only reason I can come up with for the odd formulation of this headline is that all right-thinking "scientists" of the last few decades have believed that cancer is the result of man-made chemicals in the form of pollution. Of course, when I say "scientists," I probably really mean people who write about science for edgy publications like Gizmodo, such as Mr. Ed Cara, who also writes for The Atlantic and Pacific Standard magazine. His education level is not something that's easily available for public scrutiny, so he may just be another NYC-based hipster doofus, like Cosmo Kramer.
Covid probably been around longer.
Cancer is NOT a genetic disease. Cancer is a disease of cellular metabolism. Wheat glutamate, volatile sugar and alcohol combine with sedentary lifestyle to provide less energy than required to mRNA activators of DNA. These factors have existed in Europe for centuries.
Cancer is linked to viruses and viruses have been with us since the beginning.
I agree. Much of the increase in average lifespan is due to children living longer.
Ping.
DUH
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