Such is the claim of the article linked below, which discusses what appears to be a responsible Swedish study on this topic from about
a year ago.
Highlights from the article:
"… The Y [chromosome] also seems to hold genetic keys that stave off cancer and add years to a man’s life, according to new research.""… elderly men with some blood cells that had mutated and lost the Y also lost about 5 years from their life spans, compared with men in the group who still had their Ys. Cancer was a particular affliction.""… Those [men] who suffered from cancer, and had an early demise, were prone to lose Y chromosomes in their white blood cells.""… that the Y carries an organism’s survival kit, may not be too far off the mark."blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/y-chromosome-may-protect-against-cancer-other-diseases/Since this article was already a year old I did some follow-up and found a number of other articles, some popular, some technical, more or less confirming this claim. I also located a few apparently related facts in some of those other articles, such as that smoking is especially bad at damaging Y chromosomes, possibly explaining smoking's notorious role as a carcinogen. Some of the more technical articles also got into telomeres, etc., but the basic premise of the above article seems to be still standing.
Not that any of this does any of us any good at this point (have our Y chromosomes been taking a hit all these years?), but it certainly is one more curious piece in the survival-slash-cancer puzzle.