It points to crap water (sometimes literally) and obesity.
I would imagine the morbidly obese are “used” to gastric issues—and they would likely ignore the first signs.
Once it gets “bad”, and people notice, it is likely too late.
The pancreas is at the conjunction of your body’s blood and digestive superhighway. It spreads directly to the liver, stomach, and abdomen. And once it gets across those barriers, it is game over in most cases.
The diagnostic issue is that the pancreas’s is difficult to see through most traditional tools. In my wife’s case, they needed to do X-rays, CT Scans, Ultrasounds, and Endoscopic Ultrasounds. It wasn’t until the surgeon actually got into the pancreas that they could “stage” the tumor.
If they could come up with an inexpensive screen tool (targeting a CA19-9 factor in the blood) they would be able to diagnose early. But, morbidly obese people are going to trigger a bunch of false positives.
The biggest thing….is to be lucky.
For instance, where I live the local water utility stopped filtering the water and instead chooses to treat the water with chemicals to bring it up to code. The flying squadron I worked for on the local military base will not take that water on their flying missions so they have a dedicate water line in order to filter it. They have to change the filters every two months it's that bad.
Therefore I refuse to consume it. I purchase bottled water, which yes, has microplastics, but I also filter it. It's the only way to keep it clean and pure as possible. I still have to bath in it, as well as wash my clothes, but if I could ever afford to install a filtration system on my unit (I rent) I would do so in a heartbeat. I know I'd be changing filters often but it would be worth it. You should see the lime that builds up in my kitchen sink. It's disgusting.