Ummm, pretty much everyone that is educated in healthy eating and lifestyle choices.

Cancer can be cured, avoided and is treated by healthy choices. When you get a full does of Chemo, you will wish you had made these choices prior.

Go organic, avoid GMO foods at ALL COSTS.

To sum up this article, modern human living causes cancer, but then again maybe it doesn't cause modern humans live longer, and have more time to develop cancer. This report basically says we still know nothing.

I certainly agree, healthier diets, and life choices will reduce cancer rates, but the report is not worth much as is cause so many other factors were not ruled out. Also, of the people who died hundreds and even thousands of years ago, not all of them have been preserved. So the researchers are taking a sample of a sample. I could poke so many holes in at least the article written that it isn't funny.

With that said, again I do feel we influence cancer rates. Nobody is going to doubt that smoking increases your risk, and that there are other factors that increase it also.

If this article does anything, it will only serve to be fodder for the zealots who want to control every bit of our lives by making us feel guilty about nearly everything we do. It will be used in an attempt to make our lives like the lives of those in the Sylvester Stalone movie Demolition Man. Enhance your calm everybody, you wouldn't want to be fined 1 credit for the violation of the verbal decorum standard. LOL God save us all if we soon find ourselves using the 3 seashells.

This study should not be a surprise to anyone. We find in remote areas that cancer is very rare. People may die of treatable things early due to lack of nearby hospitals but not cancer. Other things you will notice in these remote areas is that diet is very organic, fresh and predictable and they are all thin and very active.

Gosh! I wonder if we need to spend a few million dollars more for someone to tell us to get of our butts, become active and make friends with our local farmers market.

Of course, in Demolition Man they all ate at Taco Bell :) That three shells thing always cracks me up.

As Joe Jackson sang back in the 80's, "Everythiiiing, gives you cancer, there's no cuuuure, there's no answer!"

Richard, I'm with you. Think how long was the life span back then (35-45 yrs with some exceptions)? What is the gestation period for cancers? Does that short of a life-span even give cancer enough time to kill?

An elderly, I remember discussing this with my mother. My mother's family all lived into their 80's and beyond. Cancer seemed to become prevalent when my mother was a young woman. She told me, cancer was "rare" in society before this time when it seemed to become more common. Her friends began to contact cancers.

Based upon my observations thru my life, I believe unnatural chemicals in foods, processed foods, like food colorings and preservatives, the advent of plastics [highly suspect], unnatural products, like polyester, and especially pesticides, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, which didn't appear on the scene until after WW2. Pesticides are derived from nerve gasses Hitler gave the world. And, since 1949, man has spewed 500,000 new toxins into the atmosphere!

When my son was ten, he did a school report on cancer, and 40 yrs., later, the cancer rate has creeped higher several times. Just this year, it climbed higher. And, I have not used a pesticide in 45 years and buy as many natural and organic foods and products I can get my hands on. Years ago, I asked my father-in-law what they did in agriculture before the tragedy of pesticides/nerve gasses. He said, "Why, we just picked the insects off!"

In my opinion, modern man is existing in a very unnatural world, a world of processed foods, plastics, chemicals, filthy air and adulterated water. And, in veterinairan medicine, doctors use nicotine to euthanize small animals!! How many people die every year from second hand cigarette smoke!!!

The rarity of cancer in mummies suggests it was scarce in antiquity, and "that cancer-causing factorsare limited to societies affected by modern industrialization," researcher Michael Zimmerman at Villanova University in Pennsylvania said in a statement. "In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases."

"Suggests" is right. You do realize the gene pool for Egyptian royalty was limited. If that gene pool didn't have the right genes, that could be the explanation. Additionally, as humankind marched through the ages, the gene pool has changed considerably.

I'm sorry, this is not a conclusive study by any means and should not be used for any sort of excuse for developing cancer.

Patrick - I THINK IndigoKid was being sarcastic. We ALL know your eating habits have a direct effect on your health. But I think the article is ridiculous because as long as there has been a sun there has been Malignant Melanoma, probably worse cases before the advent of sunblock. And people didn't have much of a chance to get Cancer when the average life span was 35 or 40 years. Geesh! But, then, I guess not as many people got Skin cancer during the "DARK" Ages?????

Indigo - now, be nice, sit back at the table and finish your vegetables.

This actually is a rather interesting report. One critic said that only bone-related tumors might be expected to show up, but of course mummies did manage to preserve flesh and skeletal remains, and I believe that even internal organs including the brain have been found preserved in some canopic jars. One possible flaw with this study may be its sampling size. MASSES of Egyptian mummies were taken as curios and "medicines" to Europe from the 1400's through 1800's. One well-regarded remedy for many maladies was a "touch of the mummy," or some ground-up mummified remains mixed with liquid and drunk by patients.

One unintended result was that sometimes the disease that had killed the mummified person was then given to the living patient who thus sickened and died.

In relation to this study, it means that literally entire layers of ancient civilization were removed and potentially interrupt the scope and continuity of the study.

Historical texts from ancient times do describe people who apparently suffered from cancerous tumors, especially abdominal. Interestingly, these descriptions are exceptional in surviving descriptions of long-past people - they stand out. That may suggest that the study's observation of cancer as a rarity in ancient times could be correct. And there is ancient evidence of the widespread effect of man-made environmental influences on health - Romans who lived in urban areas served by lead water pipes are known to have suffered lead poisoning.

There are always arguments today about the influence of environment in the incidence of cancer. Legal cases involving "cancer clusters" most dramatically showcase that.

All in all, an unusual and interesting use of archaeological forensics to see how much more the past might teach of about our present!

Willowbrook - ""Suggests" is right. You do realize the gene pool for Egyptian royalty was limited." - Mummification was practiced at virually every level of Egyptian society. We know of the royal tombs because they are so dramatic, but the actual number of mummified remains in and around Egypt is very large.

PPS - Indigo, do you want the fruit cup or some chocolate cake as a reward for finishing the boccoli?

Two of the biggest culprits in our modern society are manufactured compounds, i.e. flame retardants (anything made of fabric is dosed in them) and plastics. We are exposed on a daily basis to manmade chemicals that literally do not break down in the natural environment, but rather, build up in our internal organs and fat cells. These chemicals leach into our food (i.e. tuperware, saran wrap, plastic utensils) and/or our water supply.

Women living on Long Island have a breat cancer rate 4x the national average.

A lot of people on here are confusing "lifespan" and "life expectancy." Lifespan is how long a person lives independent of outside factors such as accidents, disease, and famine. Lifespan has increased only slightly (less than 10%) in the last 3,000 years. You have to look no further than the Bible for proof. Psalms 90:10 specifies that lifespan is 70 years and 80 if you have the strength. 70-80 years is still the norm.

Life expectancy is the age to which you are expected to live from your current age. Natal life expectancy is very close to lifespan. But your life expectancy has increased in modern times. This is because the greatest factors in life expectancy historically were infant mortality, death during childbirth, famine, disease, and accident/war. Your personal life expectancy actually increases each year you live because you are in a shrinking number of survivors. One reason that life expectancy in this country is so low is because we have high infant mortality.

The idea that in the past people died natural death in their 30's is simply not true. They averaged living into their 30's because something killed them before their lifespan "retired" them from old age. But when that "average" caveman or Egyptian mummy died in their 30's, there was a cause of death other than aging (which is how you die at the end of your lifespan.) But even in those times, it was not remarkable for a person to live into their 70's or 80's. What brought down the average so badly was infant mortality, which was extremely high compared to today.

Cancer has been identified in dinosaur remains. It is not a condition introduced by humans.

This has got to be one of the poorest excuses for scientific writing I have ever seen. The idea that cancer is a modern disease is patently absurd. I do not doubt that there are chemicals around today that increase the prevalence of cancer, but there are causes of cancer that have been around longer than man has been. For a scientist to make the statement "that cancer-causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization" is unbelievable. Equally appalling is that a scientist could say "[t]here is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer." It is well established that overexposure to the sun can cause cancer and we all know the sun has been around much longer than man. The same is true of radon, arsenic, lead, etc., etc., etc. Both David and Zimmerman have no business calling themselves scientists. The idea that the lack of references to cancer in ancient literature has any bearing on whether cancer existed or not at that time is a ridiculous leap to make. Just because it was not diagnosed and called cancer does not mean that it did not exist. How many other diseases that have recently been identified have existed for centuries but previously had not been diagnosed or given a name. This is like saying that because ancient literature does not refer to the earth orbiting the sun that it did not occur in ancient times. There are so many alternate explanations for the lack of evidence of cancer in ancient times that this "study" and it's conclusions are completely meaningless. All this paper will do is give the radical environmentalists one more flawed piece of "science" to point to as justification for their radical agendas. The idea that two such respected institutions as the University of Manchester and Villanova University could employee "researchers" of such dubious abilities is unfathomable. My level of respect for both of these institutions has gone down considerably.

The writings of ancient physicians were a lot more precise and accurate than JS seems to think. A good example is the Roman physician Galen. He advocated observation and recording of data as the most powerful tools of a physician with many of his own observations remain intact to this day and not being seriously challenged to any degree until the 1500's. He is estimated to have written around 10 million words of medical records --- of which over 3 million words still exist. He exhorted other physicians to keep careful records and to share them amongst themselves. They did and well over 300 million words of texts prior to 1500 still exist. Then the printing press caused an explosion of recorded diagnoses.

These physicians often did not understand processes or vectors or even the disease process itself, but they were very good at observing symptoms and recording what treatments worked and what didn't. A surprising number of modern drugs and treatments are mere refinements of well-known ancient medical practices and drugs.

The simple fact that they seldom recorded symptoms associated with cancer is a lot more indicative than some people would like to admit. We always want to assume that we are smarted (we aren't) and more creative or more capable of critical reasoning (we aren't) than people in past times. It's just a form of temporal chauvinism.

Chris-749391 - Interesting post. Pardon me for differing on one important point. "Life expectantcy" of 70-80 years as mentioned in the Old Testament is a separately-debatable yardstick, for it may have been allegorical, or may have been used in reference to the rare elders who lived so long. But the actuarial tables from the 1860's to today that were compiled by life insurance companies, particularly Metropolitan Life, showed that at least in the surveyed populations, life expectancy at birth hardly surpassed age 60 for Caucasian American men until the middle 1960's, with Caucasian American women having a life expectancy of between 2-5 years greater. Since that time, life expectancy at birth has risen significantly. In the 1800's, life expectancy of that same group was between roughly 50 and 58.

Scientists studied the mummified remains of a population of an extinct ancient tribe of Native Americans who once lived along coastal Chile about 3,500 years ago. It was not a large number, as I recall - about 35-50 mummies of adults and children. Whether under ideal conditions these people might have lived longer is unknown, but none of these people survived past age 30. Study of their mummies show that water-borne parasites killed them. Given that they had no means of preventing infestation of those parasites, while their deaths were due to an environmental influence, it is worthwhile asking whether their life expectancy at birth was a maximum of 30 or not. Just a bit of a side question, word-quibbling, you know ....

Oh, and thank you for going into greater detail about the writings of the ancients decribing medical conditions. I only made a passing reference to it above. But I made the same point that you did - deductively, at least, the recorded evidence of the past does suggest cancer was relatively rare.

and life expectancy is also driven by class and peasants werent the one's being mumified. The elites undoubtably lived in "cleaner" envronments than the peasants dealing with whatever nasty stuff related to their jobs.

John,

The 70-80 years cited by the Psalmist is specifically lifespan, not life expectancy which is an actuarial term that floats with age.

The actuarial tables that life insurance tables that life insurance companies use follow the same rules that their life insurance does. Most life insurance companies use either 12 days or 20 days (and I believe that more recently a lot are moving to 30 days) before natal life expectancy is calculated. In the past two years I have lost two grandsons --- one at 2 days (born at 20 weeks) and one as 11 days (born at 24 weeks.) Neither of these children would have been counted in insurance company actuarial tables since neither would have been eligible for life insurance. (And this is not insurance companies trying to cheat anyone, just aligning their numbers with reality.) If you add in these early infant deaths, the tables change significantly.

The first numbers that fell were deaths in children between the ages of six months and 2 years of age.

The natal life expectancy that researchers would use would start at live birth regardless of relative chances of viability.

And your issue about the Chilean mummies --- lifespan does not consider deaths except from natural aging. A parasite infestation would not be natural aging even if everyone in the community contracted it and died at a uniform age. (Though I think it would have been difficult to convince those people that it was the case unless they went elsewhere and saw that people in other places lived longer.)

We find in remote areas that cancer is very rare. People may die of treatable things early due to lack of nearby hospitals but not cancer.

I'm not sure cancer is rare. There are just fewer people and if they die no one conducts an autopsy to find out why. On my side of the family only two of many have died of cancer and on my wifes side the majority have died of cancer. And sometimes the treatment kills you before the cancer.

I think it's really sad that Patrick's ignorant, off-base, and downright false comment is near the top of the page for everyone to see. Good luck curing cancer with his organic produce, since he has no idea what he's talking about.

This article is impossible to take seriously for a number of reasons.

First off, the article headline reads "Cancer is a man-made disease, controversial study claims". Now anyone with an IQ more than 2 points above plant life knows that obviously isn't true. The sun can cause cancer. Exposure to uranium, radium or other natural radioactive elements can cause cancer. So the article loses credibility from the beginning by using a headline that most people know is absurd.

Secondly, the researcher Rosalie David makes the statement "There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer." Ok, this is just a flat out stupid statement. Again, exposure to the sun and exposure to radioactive elements can cause cancer. Both are in the "natural environment", so researcher David either misspoke herself(one can hope) or else she's an idiot. In either case, her credibility as a researcher definitely comes into question.

The article itself appears to do even more damage to her credibility because right after her statement, the article makes the comment of "dinosaurs did develop cancer long before humans came on the scene". I would think that this would further damage the findings of these researchers in the eyes of any unbiased reader.

Now if the article and the researchers had said that several things in the modern world led to an increased risk of cancer, that would have been different and I doubt most people would have disagreed with them at all. We know that's true. However, they didn't do that. The article and the statements by the researchers themselves appear to make it sound like they believe that humanity is solely responsible for cancer...which of course is ridiculous.

I guess this is what happens when people forget to apply critical thinking skills properly.

idaho dragon,

yes, the sun can cause cancer- in people of northern decent who are exposing themselves to far more sun than their bodies are designed to deal with.

someone else made a comment that you could cure cancer with organic vegetables. maybe so, but only in people who bodies are designed to metabolize a diet of mostly vegetable matter.

we are not all designed the same, and exposing ourselves constantly to conditions and diets that are foreign to our make up will make us ill.

I think its silly to scoff at organics helping decrease rates. I do know of 3 people in my own personal sphere, one malinoma, one breast, and one prostrate. All 3 went heavily into high intake of carrots and eating nothing but organic veggies. Elmininating all animal fat as well. Along with their other treatments, none of which was chemo, all are in remission today. Could it be luck of the draw, who knows? It is silly to say organics aren't helping or won't help. HELL, try anything and everything.

As well, if you think man-made pesticide and herbicide chemicals into the environment hasn't increased cancer rates, you've got to be sticking your head in the proverbial sand. I live in WA State where we have the highest rate of cancers per capita. We are also hugely an agricultural state, relying heavily on pesiticides and herbicides so your apples and cherries are spotless. Puget Sound, along with the Chesapeake Bay are two of the most polluted waterways in the US. GO google Frontline's Poisoned Waters segment for a rude awakening. It is sickening, the amount of PCBs in our waterways. Our Orca are so toxified, scientists who study their habitat and relationship to Puget Sound expects our Orca to be extinct within 20 years. The migrating salmon are FILLED with PCB's. Monoagricultural processes are playing havoc on all our waterways. ALL our waterways. While YES, there is NO doubt that sun exposure, natural chemicals in soils, arsenic, and many others have certainly had their impacts on ancient civilizations as well as latter year humans but I just can't believe when a duck looks like a duck, there are STILL those that want to call it anything but!

Does it really take your grandchild being born with a 3rd eye for you to get it. Look at the damn research! Frogs and fish in the Chesapeake growing mutations, growing same sex glands and all sorts of horrid diseases and disfigurements. Kids in large uran cities, high rates of mercury poisoning from high concentrations of smog.
Just b/c once in awhile a stupid scientific article gets written that even a layman can get that it doesn't make logical sense, is NO justification or excuse to turn a blind eye to what is happening with our food, air and water. What are you, the CEO for Syngenta or Dow or Monsanto? We are drowning in their toxic wasteland and you don't care. Just as long as ole Fred has a $13 an hour job working at the plant for the man, we need to look the other way. Amazing.

robin-6

There are toxins, natural and man made. There are diseases, some caused by environmental exposure, hormonal imbalances, hereditary, and some we don't know why. Reliable research is done in this country. Through research, it was discovered that a DDT was harmful and was discontinued. Many other products are researched before implementation. The system is not perfect, but most of the time, it is reliable.

Unfortunately, your personal experiences or suspicions prove nothing. You paint a rather gloomy picture and make it sound like the plants and animal life are diseased from our polluted and toxic environment. If so, how do you explain the huge reductions in infant mortality, that there is much less diseases and we are living approximately 25 years longer than 100 years ago?

JM from California! How about if you go watch the Frontline Poisoned Waters segment (catch the 2 hour documentary) then get back to me and tell me there's nothing to be alarmed about. By the way, it's only of many coverages of many scientific studies that indicate how man-made chemicals have become a pervasive problem. It isn't the only source of information on the subject but it's a good one. I double dog dare you to watch it. Then we'll chat afterwards, okay?

As far as infant mortality, that is a general overview but its not exactly true when you look at a bigger picture. Depends on what group you want to talk about. Low-birth rates contribute highly to infant mortality. Not surprisingly, poor people have the highest rate. Lack of neonatal care or access to it has a wee bit to do with it, dontcha think?

There are areas in southwest Washington where the infant mortality rate is so high its getting national attention. A coastal native american tribe there has been hit so hard, they may not be able to continue on another generation. They have not figured out just why yet, but its being studied heavily. This tribe also live in a high agriculture region that see's heavy use of pesticides and herbicides. Could it be their high diet of salmon and shellfish? We already know those pesky PCBs (that never break down) have infiltrated these food chains immensely. Still, even if the variables mean nothing to you, you can at least take a look at the bigger picture, eh?? Hopefully, IF you're not completely ridiculously remiss from reality, you might be able to connect some vital dots.

As far as living longer, let me ask you this: DO you not think that sanitation best practices have greatly improved living conditions therefore life expectancy rates over the last 100 years might have a wee bit to do with it? As well as the invention of antibiotics, vaccines and pharmas, diabetes control, pain control, to name a few, as well as the awareness of better eating and exercising habits have had a single thing to do with increasing life expectancy? Tuberculosis, Malaria, Polio, Measels, Small Pox outbreaks were very common 100 years ago. They were life-costing pervasive diseases that had little age discrimination. Today, thanks to science, research and development these once massive certain death diseases have been nearly irradicated except third world highly poverty-stricken regions. And thanks to science and those committed to real facts, will find our future cures to cancers, diabetes and a whole host of other life-threatening diseases.
Still, these things are not a reason why we turn our back on poisoning our own back yards, food supplies and the very air we breathe. Wanting it not to be true, doesn't make it not true. Being aware and being smarter is what will find us the answers we need.

Now I'll keep this conversation tracked for quite awhile. No need to come back to me until you take the dare. I will bet a dime to a donut, you won't take the dare.
Here, I'll even make it easy for you.

oops, it didn't link/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poisonedwaters/

Indeed! Who the heck published this soggy excuse of a scientific study? I can't believe this would even pass the peer review process with all the blatant confounding factors and not-so-vigorous research methodology. Enough said; this is inexcusable even if these researchers were only of graduate student level.

Whatever the case, I've lost both parents to cancer and numerous other family members and close friends. But the ones I cherish are all of the family members and friends who have survived!

They can intellectualize this until the cows come home and theorize until they're blue in the face, but the one thing I am aware of is that my chances of having cancer in my lifetime are huge.

Such is life and living!

Not that I need to tell you this Noelle, but make sure you are your doctors best friend and keep getting checked on to catch anything that might develop as early as possible. Gotta stay alive and love every moment you can.

I can't believe money was wasted on this "study". Lifespans were much shorter "way back when". Infection and injury were probably larger causes of mortality back in antiquity. Cancer still is primarily a disease of older folks in this day and age - of course we all know that young people tragically succumb to cancer too, but that is still a pretty rare event.

Researcher Heather,

Much of what you just cited is in the article. The reason money is "wasted" on such studies is to determine if what you say "may or may not" be true. It acts as a point of reference. I'm sure future work will be done to further flesh out our "human condition" some of which will come from the Human Genode project where genetics and environment are being studied in a magnitude and detail never before possible. This "wasted" research can and will be used in other noteworthy projects.

Nope, Heather, childhood cancer is a 20th century disease, at least according to the American Cancer Society's commentary 30 years ago.

You all realize that this wasn't a Letter or Article, right? I mean, I know reading is hard, and doing you're own investigation into the subject is even harder, but this Review was published by NPG. I'm sure you all noticed it in the upper right hand corner when you read it on PubMed, or even the publishers website. There is no "methodology" or original peer-reviewed work. Thats why its a Review. I'm sure NPG would LOVE to have you on their editorial board, you know, the ones who reviewed this article. Your qualifications surely surpass those of preeminent scientific writers.

Noelle - If Cancer is rampant in your family you MUST get checked regularly. And I think Cancer has always been around, but the industrial revolution has made people more sensitive to it than before. But let's see, when we had NO industrialization, were dying off at 35 or 40. WITH industrialization we live to be 70 or 80, BUT our advancements have made some of us more prone to get Cancer. Is it a GOOD TRADE (as they said in Dances with Wolves), or NOT? I was exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange up at the DMZ in Vietnam and have had Stage III Soft Tissue Sarcoma, Stage III Malignant Melanoma and now Parkinson's disease, ALL attributed to the chemicle Dioxin the main ingredient in Agent Orange. I've fought off the Cancer twice and now embattled with the Parkinson's, but ya gotta hang tough. Has it been worth it, the industrialization, I think so, but with maybe a little better regulation of corporations who put toxic stuff in the air, dirt and waterways of the world. Peace.

And for a lot of you, you simply do not understand the scientific process. Science looks at all the data (facts) that they know at a specific time and propose a theory that is the simplest theory that explains all the data. Other scientists then challenge the theory with their own research. Further research will either a) support the original theory, b) discredit the original theory (though, to a certain extent, this requires a new theory be created), or c) the theory is modified to encompass new data. A Law of Science called Occam's Razor requires that when formulating a theory or evaluating competing theories, the winner is the simplest one that adequately explains the data.

In this case it is very straight forward. Researchers have examined enough mummies and ancient skeletons that should exhibit a comparable rate of traces of cancer if the rate was the same as in modern humans. The data does not show a comparable rate. The simplest explanation is that in ancient times fewer people had cancers that would have left skeletal or tissue traces.

Or perhaps the sample of mummies studied did not live to an old enough age to get cancer.

very, very few of them did.

Mankind may not have introduced cancer, but he damnsure has refined the different varieties of it. That little bit of information should not fall under anyone's radar. There has been extensive research into the field of cancer(s) and I am not talking about the search for a cure. There are government funded facilities right here in the U.S.A that have been busy developing strains of cancer for the express purpose of biological warfare since the early fifties and quite possibly even earlier. This particular field does not desire recognition or publicity for obvious reasons. Yet quite a bundle of taxpayer money is annually worked into the budget for such research. The main reason no one realizes this is because the funds for this research falls under the U.S. government's National Institute of Health, as it has for the past 40+ years, and everyone naturally thinks - 'Oh! This is for a good cause.' Medical research facilities such as those at Yale, Harvard and John Hopkins are in the news from time to time announcing some medical breakthrough or updating the public on their progress in fighting some dreaded disease. They're not about to announce the other type of research going on. Research that involves altering and mutating simian primate viruses and cancer cells. The mainstream scientific community has even stated that AIDS was the direct result of an unexplained mutation of monkey viruses. Radioactive machines have been used to mutate monkey viruses. Simian viruses are used in the developement of vaccines for humans. The dangers of transmitting simian viruses in vaccines is very real and an alarming one. In 1959, U.S. Congress finally took the danger of an accidental monkey virus epidemic seriously enough and financed seven regional primate centers in order to get the experiments out and away from the bigger cities.

In November 1964 Tulane University began serving as the host institution of the Delta Regional Primate Center, located on 500 wooded acres near Covington, Louisiana. Until that time the research laboratory was located in downtown New Orleans. They obviously saw the need to remove the monkey virus from such a densely populated area. Particularly when they have been known to escape now and then. Eighty-three (83) monkeys escaped in 1994 and the public was casually advised to call the The Delta Regional Primate Center to report any monkeys seen swinging in the trees. The week prior, the Center claimed "nearly" all of them had been captured. Today, this laboratory has over 4,000 primates, thirty scientists, and 130 support staff, plus a public relations director whose job it is to boast of virus research, especially on AIDS.

So, yeah.... It's doubtful our ancestors endured the kind of health issues and problems that we are blessed with today.

Life span figures are based on averages, and there certainly were people who lived to advanced ages in ancient times.

For example, there were many tribal elders among the Native Americans, yet, even after smoking tobacco their entire lives, there was no epidemic of lung cancer among them.

The tobacco they were smoking was, of course, organic & not doused with chemicals, and it was used ritualistically instead of recreationally, but they still did not have a problem with cancer, perhaps because that was the only carcinogen they were exposed to with any regularity.

The results of this study are only to be expected, as we are exposed to many more carcinogens - and on a daily basis from the time we are born - than humans were before the industrial revolution.

Everything from processed food to the packaging it comes in, pesticides & herbicides, shampoos & soaps, air fresheners, fragrances, asbestos, petroleum products, exhaust, paints, dyes, radiation, and many the other aspects of modern life we take for granted expose us to carcinogens, and these are all fairly recent innovations.

You can even find carcinogens in our lakes & rivers thanks to industrial pollution, and the cumulative effects of this kind of exposure should not be discounted.

Although I agree with the principal of your argument, I view it as somewhat childish to make a remark like this on this topic which is completely unrelated.

I agree with Waffle, but if you look at what they ate pre New Testiment you may just find an answer you were not expecting....

I'm not promoting the Bible as a source for accurate historical information, but...

The average shorter lifespans in earlier times were primarily due to high infant mortality, not lack of people living to old age. For example, if infant mortality rates were such that half of all children born died at age 1 month, and the test of population lived to 70 years old, you would have an average life span of 35 years. Plenty of people lived to advanced ages in older societies.

See http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000682.html

Bingo ana! Glad somebody realized that average means some live much shorter, and some live much longer lives. Our oldest person living now is 11X, and there is nothing to say that somebody hundreds of years ago couldn't have lived that long or longer. It is less likely that any individual did, but not impossible when you consider how many people have lived over the years.

If you just assume a Moses lived to say 100 years old back in his day, he would have likely been so much older than anybody else around him, that he may very well have seemed X hundred of years old. This is especially true if at 100+ his memory was fading, and he didn't know how old he was himself. Also, a person who is 100 years old is 400 seasons old. Very well could have been a source of age guessing error back then.

I'm not promoting the Bible as a source for accurate historical information, but...

The average shorter lifespans in earlier times were primarily due to high infant mortality, not lack of people living to old age. For example, if infant mortality rates were such that half of all children born died at age 1 month, and the test of population lived to 70 years old, you would have an average life span of 35 years. Plenty of people lived to advanced ages in older societies.

How many? How long? Really?

Sorry, scientists are pretty smart. I think they understand the consequences of "averaging", otherwise they would be doing reports on the .2 percent of 2.2 children in modern homes today.

Actually a big part of the misunderstanding of ages quoted in the Bible, for example ol' Methusalah who supposedly lived to be a ripe old age of 969, may be due to mistranslation of certain time frames. I'm not an expert on ancient Aramaic or whatever, but I've read that the original word for a span of time, 'yom', could be taken to mean a day, a week, a month, a year or even longer, an eon for example, depending on the context.

So if Methsaleh's age of 969 is reckoned as months, or passages of the moon, which would make a lot of sense back then, then he might have been more like 78 years old, an old age for that time, to be sure, but easily within the realm of believability.

This is a bit off topic, but the same logic can explain how the world was supposedly created in seven 'time periods', if those time periods do not represent days, as commonly translated, but instead represent geological eras.

Carl - At first God forgot to put an expiration date on his invention. When he realized you get grouchy and cantankerous when you live to be 800 or so years old, he revised the expiration date to 3 score and 10 years.

MikeyMike - Or...the bible could just be myth and not truth.

But if you still want to believe it...fit those square biblical quotes in the round hole of logic!

carl,

This article in no way contradicts the Bible. Check out Psalms 90:10.

The issue of keeping track of ages has always been a problem any time anyone outlives the lifespan of an active adult. I think that most people reject the idea that Methuselah lived over 900 years. But this is not because of any attempt to mislead --- I do think that he probably lived to ripe old age, possible over 100, at which point everyone would have lost track of how long ago he was born.

A good example is that recently in Japan, the five oldest people on record as living had all died. One over 30 years ago. The government had simply lost track of them. With all the computers and obsession with keeping track of such things, if the Japanese lose track of its elderly and think that large numbers of people are much older than they were, what would it have been like in pre-history when there was no written record?

Or, or....

Maybe they did live that long, but God in His infinite wisdom, saw career politicians coming in the future and spared us all.

or those are just "generic" numbers that really just mean "alot"; as it 40 days and 40 nights, or 40 thieves. Today we'd say "gazillian."

StMiller,

don't get me wrong, my statement is in no way meant to prove or validate the supposed (there I go using that word again) "truth" of the bible, quite the opposite, in fact. It can and should be studied as one of several historical texts from a time when there were very few. It is no more or less subject to error as any of the others. Make no mistake about my intent, I do not believe that the bible is, in any way shape or form, the inerrant "word of god" and I have no interest whatsoever in "believing it."

MikeyMike - I agree that the bible has some value in the sense that it provides some historical context, but shouldn't by any stretch of the imagination be used as a factual reference tool. I watched a Discovery Channel piece (way off topic!) the other day about Noah's ark and how some people believe that the wreck of it is near Mt. Ararat. What was interesting to me about the program was that it reminded me so much of a quote I heard a long time ago..."Some people head to the Middle East with a shovel in one hand and a bible in the other". That quote says a lot.

"The "Flu" was a devastating sickness and often resulted in death. Where as now, generally speaking it's almost viewed as a minor inconvenience and we all basically get over it."

This statement is not necessarily true. The flu is still a pretty good killer every year. but we have just gotten used to it being around. The average yearly flu killed more people than the swine flu last year and had a higher kill rate in general, but because it wasn't spun up in the media with a fancy name less people noticed that it was more of a danger.

Clearly cancer is more prevalent today because of the average life span being long enough to reveal the cancers.

Don't forget your flu shot - you will live longer.

Influenza spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in the deaths of between 250,000 and 500,000 people every year, up to millions in some pandemic years. On average 41,400 people died each year in the United States between 1979 and 2001 from influenza. In 2010 the CDC in the United States changed the way it reports the 30 year estimates for deaths. Now they are reported as a range from a low of about 3,300 deaths to a high of 49,000 per year.

I GUARANTEE you they had Malignant Melanoma (skin Cancer) back in the days of the ancient Egyptians. And back then you just shrivveled up and died from it.

There are natural things that can cause cancer too; like mining dust, etc. But peasants who worked in mines wouldnt be the one's being mummified.

They've examined a lot of mummies, not just a "few", and the statistical prevalence of cancer among those mummies is much less than we have now in our general population. That's the whole point of the article.

This could not somehow be due to cancer affecting the rich (who were able to pay for mummification) in a different way than it affected "others". Cancer doesn't selectively differentiate much based on wealth, and if it does so at all in modern times, the wealthy in general have higher rates of cancer, not lower, as would make sense of your claim was true.

That's the problem, they're just examining MUMMIES and leaving out the DADDIES.

People are underestimating how many mummies are available for study. It is in the high hundreds of thousands and span almost 5000 years. There are so many mummies in Egypt that at one time the British were grinding them up and shipping them back to England as fertilizer.

And the lifespan of ancient Egyptians was comparable to our own. An old man in Egypt was pretty much the same age as an old man today. So there are plenty mummies that are past 50 years of age. Gender and age are among the easiest things to determine about a mummy with simple x-rays. And there are many types of cancer which, without surgical intervention, would have left traces on skeletons or the tissue of mummies because of metastasis.

Dr. Glaspy is an MD and has fallen into a common trap by speaking outside his area of expertise. If you subtract infant mortality from the life expectancy numbers that Dr. Glaspy has ciited, MOST people lived beyond their 30's. Because actuarial science is not taught in medical schools, Dr. Glaspy has confused lifespan and life expectancy.

In order to make ANY statement about life expectancy, it is ALWAYS false unless it is associated with an age since life expectancy increases as you get older. Even natal life expectancy has to be associated with an age (usually 12 days) and misses a huge number of premature infant deaths.

Because actuarial science is not taught in medical schools, Dr. Glaspy has confused lifespan and life expectancy.

This. I appreciate your insight. I figure though, that there were more dangers back then (or that the dangers were more lethal), such that one would be more likely to die from something else than live long enough to die from cancer, when compared with modern society. I also realize that I'm talking about death from rather than contraction of cancer, but I'm too lazy to care.

I love how the one researcher says "there is nothing in the natural environment that causes cancer" - that is so blatently false a child should be calling him out on this!! He's a researcher?? I hope to hell he's not an MD also - how scary! How about the sun you idiot? How about arsenic? How about radon? How about dioxin (yes it does occur naturally too)?? What a moronic statement...

The SUN causes Cancer. Can't leave out the SUN.

The sun doesn't cause cancer, hanging out on the beach for 8 hours a day causes cancer. Most anything in excess is bad for you. Smoking isn't anything new, they just did it a lot less and it wasn't a chemical cocktail they were smoking like it is today.

I have lived through cancer deaths in my family. My grandmother lived a full life and died of breast cancer. My brother barely scratched the surface of life and died at the age of 20 from leukemia. That was 25 years ago.

As for this story being fodder for the environmentalist wackos, until they actually come up with solutions why would any of us listen? Then the idea of eating organic, this will only happen if every family starts growing their own because with the over population of the world processed foods are the only way to feed most everyone. Not to mention how much you are punished financially for eating healthy. Once again, we need viable solutions.

Changing lifestyles to decrease the risk of cancer is going to be difficult. A lot of parents don't make their kids eat their fruits & vegetables anymore. There are so many fast food restaurants now you could get whiplash trying to name them all as you drive by. It is much more convenient to toss a frozen meal into a microwave than it is to cook real food. Our everything instant lifestyles are making us sick. How I yearn for the days of old when I would come home from school to a home cooked meal and the only choice I had was how much I wanted to eat. These days one kid wants this the other wants that and parents accommodate.

Until we can actually make society slow down I can't see anything changing. There are less smokers in the world which is a good thing but there are more drinkers. I don't want to live in a bubble and I'm sure most here don't want to either but we need to make the decisions on our own in order to make change. I certainly don't want to be regulated any more than we already are.

IMO Cancer isn't going to be the big health issue in the future. I believe that raising kids in environments that are too clean will cause a new breed of illnesses. We aren't letting them build their immune system at an early age. Sealed houses with completely filtered air, sanitizers in everything. Kill all the germs in your home and when the kids start school they are no longer protected because their bodies never adjusted. Then there is the slew of antibiotics that some parents want for their kids if their nose is running.

Sure man made chemicals are a huge cause of diseases including cancer. Asbestos is high on that list. The problem we have lies in lifestyle. Over packed schedules with no time to relax. I'm sure that sleep deprivation wasn't an issue in ancient times because they weren't laying in bed watching tv. Sleep is the only time your body has to heal and I would believe this includes fighting disease and cancer.

I'm far from an expert and I'm all over the place in my comment but I think it makes some sense.

Browns Backer - The sun DOES cause cancer. You are absolutely wrong.

Would it also be a stretch to say that the medicines we consume as a child and on into our adult life possibly contribute to the increase in cancer in the US and other "developed" countries?

Waffle_Stopper - Medicines do contribute to cancer by making us live longer. Cancer's are rare in people under 30. So you give people medicine that helps them live longer and you put a person in the sweet-spot age-wise for cancer.

Modern science tells us that Cancer is simply "any type of abnormal cell growth"...and some types and locations can kill us.....Very vague, kinda like the common cold or flu.

I have read many studies that show cancer being caused by vitamin deficiency , specifically B-17. Also vitamin B-17 has been clinically shown to safely kill cancer cells in humans...anyone heard of cancer drug LAETRILE??? look it up immediately if you have "cancer".

The cancer prevention industry is a hoax! More people make a living$$ off chemotherapy and cancer donations than all those who die from the "cancers". This article says nothing important and only helps perpetuate the ignorance.

Waffle and Wet - I agree with you both. The industrial revolution brought chemicals and toxins into the world than our delicate human bodies cannot tolerate and cause us to get Cancer. But, there were ALSO things around that caused it BEFORE the industrial revolution, like take for instance the SUN.

Laetrile is ineffective and has been shown so time and time again.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/laetrile/Patient

Not to mention can cause (unintentional) cyanide poisoning in folks who try it for cancer treatment:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1273391/?page=1

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/32/5/1121

Now who is perpetuating ignorance.

?? 4 Heather ?? If you fully read your own links....they do actually say Laetrile CAN be and "IS EFFECTIVE" in reducing cancer growths and pain, even in terminal patients who have already had chemotherapy fail. Chemotherapy drugs and radiation are %100 Poison and always cause pain! No Clinical studies YOU mention showed laetrile alone causing death....While Chemo/Radiation IS the cause of death in many cancer cases.

WHAT medicine or "product" would you Suggest for a cancer sufferer???

Stop being ridiculous and childish.

Obama did it.

:D :D :D

lolz

My money is on the Republicans being responsible for CANCER! Republicans like to see Americans suffer!

A fool and his money is soon parted...

I didn't know that plaque was a cause of mortality. Your dentist is pretty strict.

Nature doesn't create diseases. Over-population and genetic change does....don't personify nature, it makes things harder in the end for us educated people. (Well I guess humans create diseases too :P)

Jeez. I'm sure Shawn meant PLAGUE not PLAQUE. Jeez.

JM California - THAT'S Funny. I wonder if SHAWN was talking about Bubonic Plaque?

Yes, Veteran, Bubonic Plaque. Those scurvy driven, periodontilly diseased black rats killed everyone in their paths. Brushing put an end to the problem. Phew!

All three of your statements are unfinished.

1. If you say that people in the industrialized world live longer that is where the cancer should be found and it is found there. People in Africa don't live as long and cancer is consequently less prevalent there even though they live among just as much pollution.

2. Seriously, you can't quote Psalms as a valid resource. I mean seriously, the bible also says that Noah lived hundreds of years. However, the article doesn't say that no one lived to a 70+ age in ancient times, just that far less people did. In terms of lifespan, as a percentage of population a far greater number of people live into the 70+ range today than in ancient times.

3. Cancer and Diabetes do kill children, but there are many, many more people today and equally more children, so of course the number of kids dying from anything is higher than it was in ancient times.

Up until about 100 years ago, countless women died in childbirth, ONE HALF of all children died before the age of 5; and this plus many communicable diseases which have now been "eradicated" accounted for an average life expectancy of about 45-50 in 1900. Of course, there were also people who lived to be 70 or 80---- as there were in the ancient world when general life expectancy was about 30.

Whether it's cancer, the bubonic plague, or anything else, none of us gets out of here alive.

Look up the Bulls-Eye effect.

Ummm... maybe you should move??

He's probably a member of the Flat Earth Society and the Geocentric Society too.

This "researcher," Rosalie David at the University of Manchester in England, is an ABSOLUTE idiot and really needs to have his credentials checked before making such statements. In the article, he is quoted as saying... "There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer."

This is complete BS. Anyone with any knowledge of carcinogens knows there are a HUGE number of items found in the natural environment that have been POSITVELY linked to and proven to cause cancer.

@ghostndragon - You stated one of the most common of these natural carcinogens...the Sun, or actually the UV light emited by it. Ionizing radiation is a huge contributer to many different types of cancers. And nothing of the industrialized world caused the sun to come into existence one magical day.

Some may argue that industrialization may increase our UV exposure... ok, granted. I'll give you that, but there any many, many more examples of natural carcinogens, from fungus, bacteria, and viruses that have been around since before humans existed, to some of the very metal contaminants leeched out of bedrock into natural water sources used to this very day in natural springs located all over the world.

This researcher is bogus... and really needs to review his facts before making such claims!

Actually, in the sense that an anthropologist would use, there would be, over time, no natural causes of cancer except perhaps DNA damage done by cosmic radiation. Which, except in the case of astronauts, is still considered a random event.

A good example is UV radiation from the sun. In ancient times people in places where the sun was intense would have 1) had more protection than modern man from the ozone layer, which was then entirely intact, and 2) would have had cultural biases that favored shielding ones self from the sun's direct rays, and 3) would have had adaptive coloration that would have acted hugely to protect them from skin cancer.

Egyptians in ancient times were very dark --- almost as dark as modern Ethiopians. Lower class Egyptians are still quite dark. Until the leaders were Ptolemaic, they were always depicted as quite dark. The later ruling classes were Greek and emphasized their lighter complexions by trying to stay as light-skinned as possible. So the early ruling classes would have had a lot of protection by virtue of their darker complexions and the later ruling classes by virtue of staying out of the sun.

Chris,

Sorry but your comment is illogical. Logically speaking, the sun is a "natural" cause of cancer because it was not created by humanity. The fact that you get skin cancer if you're exposed to it for too long is irrelevant because the sun is the CAUSE. How an anthropologist views it is irrelevant because it doesn't change the basic logic.

Just as developing cancer due to being exposed to radon, radium or uranium that happens to exist naturally close to where you live must logically be considered a "natural" cause of cancer because those things were not man-made. What else would you call it, if not a natural cause?

How about uranium?

Nice sarcasm Skeptic :)

Oh, but you misread me, Ramiel.

Lifespans also went up by about 20+ years.

try volunteering at a childrens hospital some time.

While volunteering at a children's hospital is undeniably a noble endeavor, I'm not sure what it has to do with the indisputable fact that lifespans, on average, increased dramatically in the 20th century. Infant and childhood diseases that were almost always fatal 100 years ago at least are fightable now.

You are oversimplifying a very complex science. We are learning that the consequences of famines, certain behaviours and exposures in our lifetimes may cause disease, skip a generation and be passed to our grandchildren. That means that some of the diseases today originated from our grandparents. In order to rid ourselves and future generations of potential harms, a deeper scientic investigation is required, not just your basic hypothesis.

Chris,

Careful about your conclusion... Ancient cultures exposed themselves, unknowingly, to many poisons, like arsenic and lead. Also, their food sources where limited and dietary habits were mostly governed by hunger and not an understanding of "nutrition".

I stand by my conclusion that this study is quackery. At the very least it makes an unjustifiable conclusion. With the caveat that I am not an oncologist, it appears to me that cancer has many potential causes and many potential triggers. The fact that there was even one incidence of cancer in the ancient past undermines the conclusion that it is a "modern" disease. We are better at identifying cancers and causes of death now than 100 years or 1000 years ago.