Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pja 1251 days ago
> Cancer rates have exploded since 1970

So has life expectancy!

Cancer is ultimately a numbers game & you roll the dice every single day. Life expectancy in the US today is ten years longer than it was in 1970. All those extra dice rolls add up. Ideally you could correct for this effect, but it’s not clear we know enough about how cancer risk accumulates over time to do this correctly.

1 comments

Cancer rates for each age have exploded, not just total cancer rates. Cancer rates for cancers that were known and diagnosed well before 1970 have exploded.