Comment by croemer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by croemer | Hacker News Reader

Garbage, read the responses, here's one:

> Zhao et al report 79% increase in actual number of cases from 1990 to 2019, but this figure can be misleading, as it does not take account of population growth. The authors therefore also report estimated annual percent change (EAPC) of the incidence rates of various cancers. However, it is unfortunate that the press has largely focused on the overall number rather than the per capita risk of cancer, giving the impression that we are facing an epidemic of cancer in young individuals. https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049.responses

The headline figure of 79% does not account at all for population increase. This is bad science (communication).

> In 2019, the incidence number of early-onset cancer was 3.26 million, a 79.1% increase from 1990 (figure 1A,B).

Incidence number simply counts cancers. Of course there are more cancers given world population increase. This should never be in a study headline.

Thank you very much - was skeptical of the headline, looking through the comments to find an explanation, so thank you for delivering. Another important quote from your source:

> However, focusing on absolute case numbers does not take into account that the global population in the age group 15-49 increased by 45% and in the age group 40-49 (where most incident cases have occurred) by 86% during the study period (see Table S2). Both, age specific and age standardized rates show no increase in incidence in incidence and mortality for the period 1995 to 2020 (Figure 5). Age standardized mortality declined substantially during the study period.

Also, better detection of early cancers. Also in the past, cancer deaths may have been misattributed as something else.

Scanning tech has gotten much much better in the past 20 years along with software that helps doctors recognize tumors and other abnormalities with even older tech.

This was my immediate first question. The title and front matter would mention if. this is growth adjusted.

I also think there are many forces at play. We've started:

- consuming more packaged goods

- selling unhealthy things as healthy

- doing less physical labor

- having more mental health problems at a young age

I feel a study like this does nothing to tell us what the cause is, just noting the sensationalized effect.

But it says that "All rates are reported per 100k population."

But many things reported are not rates, it's subtle

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