I don't have math or numbers on this- does anyone?- but I can tell from personal experience that just about every time some software engineer my age becomes mortally ill, it's brain cancer. There is something unstudied about what we do that causes problems.
Personally, I had my biggest scare a couple years ago while I was working on a deeply nested, recursive algorithm. Trying to keep the whole thing in my head caused me to stay awake at night. Eventually, I had a fainting spell at a sushi bar, an ambulance was called, and ultimately the doctor thought I'd had a a massive heart attack.
This didn't turn out to be true, thank God, and they never found the biological cause. But I swear to this day that it was the algorithm gnawing on my brain. I don't know that I've been the same engineer since.
There's a terrible risk in our business and no one is researching it. I almost feel like we software engineers are like 3 pack a day smokers before enough science and research was done to prove to the public that smoking causes cancer.
Software engineering can cause brain cancer.