zlacker

I haven't heard this before - the change isn't that large but but it really does drop after 80

My inclination is that this could still just be a selection effect. For people who are prone to cancer, you are probably dead by 80.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...

>>marinm+(OP)
85 year olds die from cancer like 70 year olds but still over twice the rate of a 55 year old.

Hardly a consolation.

The other thing to consider is that once you get to 85, you're likely to die from just about everything else, not just heart disease and cancer.

>>readth+S
science reporting is pretty bad. unsubstantiated, weak, or wrong claims are hyped up .

>>readth+S
Mr Burns: so what you’re saying is, I’m indestructible!

Doctor: Oh no, and in fact even a slight breeze could k…

Mr Burns: Innndestructibllllle.

>>readth+S
Fwiw this is a graph of being diagnosed with cancer, not dying.

>>readth+S
Could this be an artifact of how we measure cancer? My own grandfather probably had cancer when he died, but so much else wasn’t working that I think the docs just didn’t bother testing for cancer or diagnosing it. Treatment would not improve his prognosis at that point.

>>mdavid+F5
I’ve heard from medical student, that at later age cancer is less risky due to slower overall metabolism. Not a fertile environment for cancer to grow.

>>earnes+Oc
Medical students often miss the fine nuances, I would know, I used to be one.

Cancer at a later age, like at 85, is "less risky", because you'll be likely to die of something else than the cancer before you're 90 anyway.

Cancer at a later age, like 60, is "less risky" because your body have had plenty of time to grow indolent and lazy cancers by then, and your immune system is winding down, letting them bloom up a bit.

Cancer at like 30, while many are treatable nowadays, is usually bad news as why are you having cancer at 30 of your genes aren't massively prone to spawn cancer or you had some environmental exposure to serious mutagens.

But even in the older age categories there's plenty of really nasty cancers that lead to ugly deaths, which is why I don't like generalizations like this.

>>marinm+(OP)
Isn't it simply because these people won't ever get cancer, and so they die of something else. So if you reach a certain age you outlive most people that would die from cancer.

And then always researchers try to find a clue in the patient and see like oh hey they have more iron, iron must be the solution, but maybe the person just didn't get cancer because (s)he had a healthy lifestyle and relatively little stress.

>>marinm+(OP)
The article seems to claim it’s as simple as your cells regenerate less often past 80, thus fewer chances for mutations and thus cancer.

>>mathge+aC
That's not very simple. It's simpler that the observation is due to an unmeasured confounder or observation bias -- like, for example, a lot more people are dying of all causes at age 80 and beyond, so fewer people get diagnosed with cancer. Or, alternatively, doctors don't bother looking for certain cancers after age 80.

I'm not saying that these are the cause, but there are ton of similar, simple statistical arguments you'd have to rule out before arriving at a relatively complex conclusion about human biology.

>>gitaar+om
Or maybe the researchers are smart enough to control for things like that, and have actually discovered a mechanism.

>>gitaar+om
> … these people won't ever get cancer …

Prostate cancer is surprisingly prevalent but (commonly) slow-proliferating, and is often “beaten to the punch” by other causes of mortality.

>>tempes+7D
Or they aren't. Nothing is telling me they are smart enough for that. In fact if you look at most scientific research it seems they don't think, or maybe care about this. Because their motives are finally to make new medicines they can sell. That is what they're interested in, not in really healing people.

>>gitaar+d91
At least, maybe the researchers themselves are interested, but they're funded for making medicines to sell, not for healing people.

>>timr+nC
No argument here, just relaying what the article is claiming for folks who just read the headline.