Comment by Udo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Udo | Hacker News Reader

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Every student entering a bio field who learns what cancer is and how it works already knows that this is a disease shaped by many factors. Fundamentally, the problem of fighting cancer is the problem of fighting a set of evolutionary mechanisms that are trying to kill you. The popular press always insists on boiling everything down to one easy-to-understand factor, that's how we get those ridiculous and recurring exclamations about cancer that have to be thrown out next week.

There is no single thing you can do as an individual that gets you off the hook for cancer. You can try reducing your probabilities based on the results of studies, but in most respects that's a way more complicated endeavor than what the media portrays it as. Even regular prophylactic screening is not as good a tool as it instinctively seems. Many studies don't give you the complete picture at all, so it rarely makes sense to change your life based on the latest breathlessly exaggerated finding blared at you by the press.

Cancer is tens (perhaps thousands) of substantially different diseases. And yet, we group them under a common name "cancer" because they do have commonalities, and while so far treatments focus on very specific cancers, it is not unthinkable that we WILL actually find a common treatment.

The naked mole rat has apparently solved the cancer problem[0] - and while it is not perfectly understood, it is definitely NOT by mitigating hundreds of different cancer factors - the prevailing theory is that it detects and destroys "overcrowding", regardless of cause. We might be able to do something like that for humans, although right now it is still in the realm of science fiction.

The most promising venue to the best of my knowledge is the Warburg Effect[1]; unfortunately, it has been promising and not really delivering for 80 years now, although DCA[2], which showed promise and is undergoing clinical tests as a cancer treatment, is at least conceptually related - malfunctioning mitochondria and fermentation-in-lieu-of-glycolysis seem to be two sides of a similar coin to my (untrained, ignorant) eyes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat#Resistance_to_c...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichloroacetic_acid#Cancer

"There is no single thing you can do as an individual that gets you off the hook for cancer."

It's not going to get you off the hook, but I think it's safe to say that regular, vigorous exercise drops cancer risk, all else being equal.

There aren't many magic bullets, but regular, vigorous exercise appears to be pretty close - for just about everything from lower back pain to dementia.

It's actually been shown time and time again that the most obvious benefit in the "lifestyles to discourage cancer" department is to simply not smoke cigarettes.

But certainly exercise is a close second; add to it all of the other benefits you mention.

I read the headline and wondered:

"Since when is 'Bad Luck' anything other than a euphemism for the physiological stress which is symptomatic of poverty?"

Clever science journalists note that nearly everything outside of the organism can be generically labeled as the environment.

__As a reply to DanBC:__

>normal random mutation

This phrase does not mean anything in terms of molecular biology or genetics. It is equivalent to "Bad Luck", or "mutation triggered by something". The phrase is inappropriate because it equates point mutations, insertion mutations and deletion mutations.

As a rule, when thou wants to say the modifier "normal random"; thou should instead say "normally distributed", and then make sure that is worth mentioning in that field of science.

In this specific case: "bad luck" was being used to talk about normal random mutation, as opposed to a genetic predisposition or a mutation triggered by something you ate or drank or smoked or otherwse exposed yourself.

It's unfortunate that the original researchers used that phrase; and the the reporters did a terrible job of explaining it; and that the reporting of this newer study uses similar language.

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The appeal to ego is an important part of clickbait. Sociological approaches are the most effective measure in societies where the incidence of cancer is low. Ironically, people who find out that cancer is their personal problem are those who are most able to receive treatment. Many if not all modern problems must be solved through massive collaboration; that which we can be conditioned to eschew or enjoy. The negative conditioning is thusly a Bayesian impedance to human advancement.

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