alt Hacker NewsIt went up by 4 per 100k. And, since it was at 6 in 2000, that's a large increase.
>Zoom the chart out, and you would probably be excused for assuming it is flat with some noise.
That's true of all cancers, if not all statistics.
The concern here is two-fold:
(1) The people under 50 now will be over 50 in a decade or so. We can already see that the trend of colorectal cancer among those aged 50 to 64 was decreasing until 2012, but had since gone up. This will likely get worse. Early onset colorectal cancer is a canary in the coalmine.
(2) Unless this trend is caused by a specific chemical exposure or a purely dietary reason, the behavior/lifestyle/health conditions behind it are likely to lead to other types of cancers. Obesity and lack of exercise have been linked to a lot of cancers. I'm worried about losing progress across the board when these young people reach their 60s.
It was not true of all cancers two decades ago. Which is largely my point. Things are better than they were 50 years ago. Including this. Should we try and make sure we don't reverse that progress? Absolutely.
And it is notable that this research largely pointed to genetics as being ~20% of the cases of early onset results. That combined with how it presents in a very different way from older patients seems to point to us also getting better at spotting it.
All of which is good! It is progress. And I hope we get even better at it.
If you are merely noting it as a concern for "things to continue to watch," I'm fully with you. Read the rest of the comments on this post, though. Tons of people pointing at things that just don't present in the evidence. Fear that we will find that one killer ingredient/process to explain the uptick here; all while failing to acknowledge that we did find many such problems in the past and have made quite astounding progress on it.