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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

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> Bafflingly, many of the new clinic’s young patients are in good shape, exercise regularly and eat healthily. That is prompting a hunt for environmental carcinogens capable of affecting entire generations

The article specifically addresses the points you’ve made and does not believe them to be the culprit.

No, it actually says these don’t account for all of the increase.

thanks for raising my attention to this detail

yes, my bad for not reading the article properly ... classic case of wannabe-indie-thinker-judging-decades-long-training-based-on-universe-consciousness (i'm kidding but it's warranted, slightly exaggerated self-criticism)

I have to wonder what the inactivity is doing to people, I know people who literally do next to nothing, going to the gym for 20 minutes a day is something, but it's nothing if you just go sit on the couch for the other 16 waking hours of the day.

Were you unable to access the text of the article because of some paywall or barrier? Or are you reacting to the title alone?

The authors state very clearly that many of the victims lead a healthy life with enough movement and good food.

Why would be a 2x - 3x increase of cancers in young people unbelievable? The baseline was very low, so a two- or three-fold increase still amounts to a relatively small amount of extra cancer cases that you don't have to notice in your personal acquaintance bubble. The vast majority of cancer still happens in the elderly.

No they don’t say that, they are saying lifestyle factors do not account for all of the increase. What proportion of healthy people are getting ill the article isn’t clear if it is 5%, 20% or 50% it just says “many”…

If plane flights started having 2-3x more chance of fatal accidents I’m unconvinced you would be saying this isn’t a very bad situation…

I am not saying that the situation is "not bad". That was not my intent at all.

I am saying that random people might not have noticed the trend among their acquaintance circle, because the commenter before me expressed their disbelief in the whole situation.

i was indeed reacting to the title alone. shouldn't have done that.

your way of questioning my fallacy (jumping to conclusions doesn't really nail it, so i'm gonna go with 'being an idiot' is quite on point) made me smile and is inspiring, thank you.

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