Additional Information and Other Common Questions (1)

Cancer and bad luck

Most people would agree that prevention is the best strategy to reduce the chances of getting cancer; there have been numerous reports and books talking about cancer prevention.  However, there are also a wide range of new reports about cancer coming out from time to time.

Recently, Dr. Cristian Tomasetti and Dr. Bert Vogelstein from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center used a statistical model to measure the proportion of cancer risk across many tissue types.  “All cancers are caused by a combination of bad luck, the environment and heredity, and we’ve created a model that may help quantify how much of these three factors contribute to cancer development,” according to Dr. Vogelstein.  Based on their studies, two-thirds of the variation in adult cancer risk can be explained primarily by bad luck, when specific mutations occur while stem cells divided, and the remaining one-third are due to environmental factors and inherited genes.

If we look only on the surface of the report, it is easy to get discouraged by their finding.  According to the website of Johns Hopkins regarding their research work, “Getting cancer could be compared to getting into a car accident.  Our results would be equivalent to showing a high correlation between length of trip and getting into an accident. Every accident is caused by some combination of road conditions, car conditions, length of the trip and other factors”.

Therefore, some people may be misled to think that two-thirds of cancer risks are simply by bad luck and don’t do anything to prevent cancer.  However, if we were to look deeper into their conclusion and do a little more pondering, we could see some positive side of the report. 

© Jiajiu Shaw, 2018

Disclaimer: This blog is written solely for informational purposes. It does not constitute the practice of any medical, nursing or other medical professional health care advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All contents posted are extracted from the book I wrote, "IS CANCER IN US", published recently.