"Some cancer specialists counter these concerns, saying the surge in diagnoses is primarily a surge in detecting cancers that did not need to be found..."
This seems excessively paternalistic. If medical professionals hold a legal monopoly on providing diagnostic care, then decide it's better to just not diagnose things, it leaves patients with no way to discover life-altering information about their own health.
There is cancer in your body every single day. Your immune system handles it just fine. There is an explicit difference between cancer that needs treating and cancer that should be ignored because it's a waste of time and resources to treat. You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to tell the difference, you're not trained on cancers, you're not even in the medical field. The monopoly is held for exactly this reason.
We already have an extreme shortage of available healthcare workers. We don't need to stress them further because 20% of the population suddenly decides they need 80 elective surgeries to remove things that would've gone away or stayed benign on their own.
> You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to tell the difference, you're not trained on cancers, you're not even in the medical field. The monopoly is held for exactly this reason.
The idea that a position of authority means ~anything~ anymore is completely ridiculous.
What did the medical field do to earn such credibility with you? Any intelligent person should have developed a high degree of skepticism regarding the operations of the medical field as of 2025.
> We already have an extreme shortage of available healthcare workers. We don't need to stress them further because 20% of the population suddenly decides they need 80 elective surgeries to remove things that would've gone away or stayed benign on their own.
Strawman. No one is suggesting adding extra stress to healthcare workers. It's also not you or your doctors call to make: let's gatekeep this patients cancer because our hospital can't deal with the workload. What a truly wicked idea.
To help alleviate the extreme shortage of available healthcare workers we should instead allow those wanting to pay for these elective surgeries, to pay for them! Drive money into healthcare, scale up treatments, drive money into research. Let the system work.
It also has to make financial sense, everyone's insurance would be much higher, cancer treatments are $$$, in countries with a public healthcare system it's a no go
Because everything is mostly following on local purchasing power. You can build a beautiful modern house in buttfuck nowhere Belarus for 20% of what you'd pay for the same exact house in Germany.
The screening isn't even the problem, finding you have _a_ cancer is one thing, pinpointing where it is, how to treat it, treating it and recovering from it cost orders of magnitude more than the initial diagnosis.
That's kind of like saying that there is diabetes in your body every single day, and your body handles it just fine by producing insulin. Obviously that statement is nonsensical and essentially devoid of any useful insight.
I'm not even going to comment on this: "You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to tell the difference", because this is such a weird statement that I don't understand how anybody could utter it on this website.
If that is your standard for critical thinking, you are paving the way for anti-science rhetoric to dominate public discourse.
Treat people like stupid idiots if you want but then don't be surprised by the way they vote in elections as a result.
I won’t even get into the irony of you not realizing that not all forms of diabetes are related to insulin (diabetes insipidus) while simultaneously claiming that you don’t need to be a doctor to be qualified enough to make complex medical decisions.
In the first place, the analogy is wrong. You need insulin, you need blood sugar. Both SHOULD be present. Cancer never SHOULD be present, it just happens to be there often, like any other thing your body clears out.
Edit: the word “diabetes” originally comes from a word meaning “to pass through”. Literally the only thing linking all diabetic conditions is needing to pee a lot
If the cancer is not clinically significant, then its not life-altering information.
Essentially they are saying that many of these diagnoses are potentially false positives. To the point where detecting them might be more harmful then not. Keep in mind most cancer treatments are pretty harsh. They are better than cancer, but if you don't have clinically significant cancer then the treatments can be very not worth it.
"The rise in early-onset cancer incidence does not consistently signal a rise in the occurrence of clinically meaningful cancer. While some of the increase in early-onset cancer is likely clinically meaningful, it appears small and limited to a few cancer sites. Much of the increase appears to reflect increased diagnostic scrutiny and overdiagnosis. Interpreting rising incidence as an epidemic of disease may lead to unnecessary screening and treatment while also diverting attention from other more pressing health threats in young adults" [1].
The rise in the preventative screening centers (such as prenuvo) that offer whole body MRIs will be interesting.
The research seems split on if it is worth it or just causes unneeded worry. Obviously if you catch something early then that is great, but there are a lot of people who have a ton of followup testing only to find out there is no issue.
There are also limitations with the level of detail a full body MRI can capture.
I could see it becoming similar to a colonoscopy where you get it like when you turn 30 or something and then every 5-10 years after that.
Consuming foods rich in antioxidants may help. "Research suggests that free radical molecules can add to the risk of health issues linked to aging. Some examples are heart disease, age-related macular degeneration, Alzheimer's disease and cancer." https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...
On the other hand, it's known that consuming the antioxidant vitamin E actually promotes the progression of lung cancer. Cancer cells are under oxidative stress so antioxidants can help them survive and grow.
The Vitamin E / NAC relationship are interesting. As far as I understand, there needs to be a balance of anti-oxidants (C, E, Selenium, etc). To make it worse there are so many formulations of Vitamin E you can buy (tocopherols, tocotrienols, etc). Sometimes its hard to tell from the studies what forms exactly were being used.
You may also find this interesting:
"NRF2 activation is a predictor of poor clinical outcomes in lung cancer. Given the widespread use of NRF2-inducing compounds such as resveratrol and sulforaphane, these findings raise important concerns about their safety in individuals at risk for or living with cancer."
>The problem is that it is impossible to know if someone’s cancer will be deadly or not.
And that is the issue, I know 2 people who developed cancers when they were around 40, one died, the other person survived but had to be treated. So we close our eyes and hope for the best ?
And I'm sure neither were one of the cancers discussed in the article as candidates for lower screening. Nobody's suggesting we stop looking for lung cancer or any of the other many deadly ones. OTOH, increased screening for thyroid cancer had 0 impact on life expectancy in South Korea.
It's from a dramatic rise in inactive lifestyles by younger people and a lot of sitting, with the predictable consequences. Behavior which would have been far less common before mass adoption of video games and personal computing in the home, and then everybody sitting/laying around their homes with their smartphones. Young people go out less, they have a lot less sex, they're far less social in-person. It all goes together.
These people under 50 were the first generation to sit around at home for long periods of time playing video games. The NES came out in 1985-86 in the US and home video gaming has been mass adopted since. From there add on the full adoption of sitting down at a computer for work in offices across the 1980s and 1990s. Then throw in the full adoption of home computing in the 1990s with Win3 & Win95 + GUI. And for the past 20 years, throw in the smartphone.
It's the sitting primarily, hours and hours of it every day.
Surely it has nothing to do with the proliferation of chemicals and microplastics into the ecosystem, water, food, etc. That would be absurd, after all, a Monsanto-sponsored study found that their pesticides are totally safe.
"Some cancer specialists counter these concerns, saying the surge in diagnoses is primarily a surge in detecting cancers that did not need to be found..."
This seems excessively paternalistic. If medical professionals hold a legal monopoly on providing diagnostic care, then decide it's better to just not diagnose things, it leaves patients with no way to discover life-altering information about their own health.
There is cancer in your body every single day. Your immune system handles it just fine. There is an explicit difference between cancer that needs treating and cancer that should be ignored because it's a waste of time and resources to treat. You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to tell the difference, you're not trained on cancers, you're not even in the medical field. The monopoly is held for exactly this reason.
We already have an extreme shortage of available healthcare workers. We don't need to stress them further because 20% of the population suddenly decides they need 80 elective surgeries to remove things that would've gone away or stayed benign on their own.
> You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to tell the difference, you're not trained on cancers, you're not even in the medical field. The monopoly is held for exactly this reason.
The idea that a position of authority means ~anything~ anymore is completely ridiculous.
What did the medical field do to earn such credibility with you? Any intelligent person should have developed a high degree of skepticism regarding the operations of the medical field as of 2025.
> We already have an extreme shortage of available healthcare workers. We don't need to stress them further because 20% of the population suddenly decides they need 80 elective surgeries to remove things that would've gone away or stayed benign on their own.
Strawman. No one is suggesting adding extra stress to healthcare workers. It's also not you or your doctors call to make: let's gatekeep this patients cancer because our hospital can't deal with the workload. What a truly wicked idea.
To help alleviate the extreme shortage of available healthcare workers we should instead allow those wanting to pay for these elective surgeries, to pay for them! Drive money into healthcare, scale up treatments, drive money into research. Let the system work.
Don't just turn off the lights and shut the door.
At a population level, that makes sense.
But, as the article notes, we don't know if any particular cancer will kill an individual.
It's a conundrum. But, "Meh, let's not test since it might not kill you." doesn't feel like the right answer.
It also has to make financial sense, everyone's insurance would be much higher, cancer treatments are $$$, in countries with a public healthcare system it's a no go
Ehh. It’s only that expensive because we let be. You can get a basic cancer screen in India for 2500 rupees which is about $35.
Because everything is mostly following on local purchasing power. You can build a beautiful modern house in buttfuck nowhere Belarus for 20% of what you'd pay for the same exact house in Germany.
The screening isn't even the problem, finding you have _a_ cancer is one thing, pinpointing where it is, how to treat it, treating it and recovering from it cost orders of magnitude more than the initial diagnosis.
That's kind of like saying that there is diabetes in your body every single day, and your body handles it just fine by producing insulin. Obviously that statement is nonsensical and essentially devoid of any useful insight.
I'm not even going to comment on this: "You're not a doctor, you're not qualified to tell the difference", because this is such a weird statement that I don't understand how anybody could utter it on this website.
If that is your standard for critical thinking, you are paving the way for anti-science rhetoric to dominate public discourse.
Treat people like stupid idiots if you want but then don't be surprised by the way they vote in elections as a result.
No, it’s nothing like that.
I won’t even get into the irony of you not realizing that not all forms of diabetes are related to insulin (diabetes insipidus) while simultaneously claiming that you don’t need to be a doctor to be qualified enough to make complex medical decisions.
In the first place, the analogy is wrong. You need insulin, you need blood sugar. Both SHOULD be present. Cancer never SHOULD be present, it just happens to be there often, like any other thing your body clears out.
Edit: the word “diabetes” originally comes from a word meaning “to pass through”. Literally the only thing linking all diabetic conditions is needing to pee a lot
If the cancer is not clinically significant, then its not life-altering information.
Essentially they are saying that many of these diagnoses are potentially false positives. To the point where detecting them might be more harmful then not. Keep in mind most cancer treatments are pretty harsh. They are better than cancer, but if you don't have clinically significant cancer then the treatments can be very not worth it.
Then here's an idea: instead of hiding that information, you can explain it to the patient.
You have no authority to treat your patient like a child.
That could be true, but it isn't, since we don't always know at the individual level if a specific tumor is harmless at the moment of diagnosis.
You could say the same thing about diagnosing cancer via astrology.
A test that with low specificity is simply not a useful test.
> we don't always know at the individual level if a specific tumor is harmless at the moment of diagnosis.
You didn't know prior to the test either.
"The rise in early-onset cancer incidence does not consistently signal a rise in the occurrence of clinically meaningful cancer. While some of the increase in early-onset cancer is likely clinically meaningful, it appears small and limited to a few cancer sites. Much of the increase appears to reflect increased diagnostic scrutiny and overdiagnosis. Interpreting rising incidence as an epidemic of disease may lead to unnecessary screening and treatment while also diverting attention from other more pressing health threats in young adults" [1].
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
The rise in the preventative screening centers (such as prenuvo) that offer whole body MRIs will be interesting.
The research seems split on if it is worth it or just causes unneeded worry. Obviously if you catch something early then that is great, but there are a lot of people who have a ton of followup testing only to find out there is no issue.
There are also limitations with the level of detail a full body MRI can capture.
I could see it becoming similar to a colonoscopy where you get it like when you turn 30 or something and then every 5-10 years after that.
The term is incidentaloma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidental_imaging_finding
Consuming foods rich in antioxidants may help. "Research suggests that free radical molecules can add to the risk of health issues linked to aging. Some examples are heart disease, age-related macular degeneration, Alzheimer's disease and cancer." https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...
On the other hand, it's known that consuming the antioxidant vitamin E actually promotes the progression of lung cancer. Cancer cells are under oxidative stress so antioxidants can help them survive and grow.
https://www.lung.org/blog/antioxidants-lung-cancers
The Vitamin E / NAC relationship are interesting. As far as I understand, there needs to be a balance of anti-oxidants (C, E, Selenium, etc). To make it worse there are so many formulations of Vitamin E you can buy (tocopherols, tocotrienols, etc). Sometimes its hard to tell from the studies what forms exactly were being used.
You may also find this interesting:
"NRF2 activation is a predictor of poor clinical outcomes in lung cancer. Given the widespread use of NRF2-inducing compounds such as resveratrol and sulforaphane, these findings raise important concerns about their safety in individuals at risk for or living with cancer."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11357-025-01736-0
Many people eat high-sulforaphane containing foods for health benefits.
And finally from last week https://newatlas.com/diet-nutrition/vitamin-c-air-pollution-...
This was about 1000mg / day for humans.
>The problem is that it is impossible to know if someone’s cancer will be deadly or not.
And that is the issue, I know 2 people who developed cancers when they were around 40, one died, the other person survived but had to be treated. So we close our eyes and hope for the best ?
And I'm sure neither were one of the cancers discussed in the article as candidates for lower screening. Nobody's suggesting we stop looking for lung cancer or any of the other many deadly ones. OTOH, increased screening for thyroid cancer had 0 impact on life expectancy in South Korea.
https://archive.ph/NIptp
It's from a dramatic rise in inactive lifestyles by younger people and a lot of sitting, with the predictable consequences. Behavior which would have been far less common before mass adoption of video games and personal computing in the home, and then everybody sitting/laying around their homes with their smartphones. Young people go out less, they have a lot less sex, they're far less social in-person. It all goes together.
These people under 50 were the first generation to sit around at home for long periods of time playing video games. The NES came out in 1985-86 in the US and home video gaming has been mass adopted since. From there add on the full adoption of sitting down at a computer for work in offices across the 1980s and 1990s. Then throw in the full adoption of home computing in the 1990s with Win3 & Win95 + GUI. And for the past 20 years, throw in the smartphone.
It's the sitting primarily, hours and hours of it every day.
> It's the sitting primarily, hours and hours of it every day
...do you have a source for this causative link? It would seem like it's highly testable.
Surely it has nothing to do with the proliferation of chemicals and microplastics into the ecosystem, water, food, etc. That would be absurd, after all, a Monsanto-sponsored study found that their pesticides are totally safe.