OT-Cancer 'tidal wave' coming-WHO

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26014693

I thought this was interesting and appropriate to share here. By far the most interesting thing to me are the side by side maps showing 2012 cancer cases and 2012 deaths/100,000 people.

They give the usual admonishment-start exercising and eating more whole grains and cutting out the red meat. Exactly not what I'm doing on the diet front.

I did find the two maps interesting. Look at the blue one and the sky high cancer rates in Europe and the Anglosphere of Canada/Aus/NZ/USA/Britain and compare that to the lower cancers rate in 2012 in Asia. Then click to deaths per 100,000 and it is inversely proportional. I guess you can chalk it mostly up to healthcare.

In the last few years I've had a dream of moving to Africa and thought Namibia might be the best spot after researching (it's the one northwest of South Africa.)

As far as I can tell, in these maps, it looks like pretty much the best of both data points combined. India and the Arabian peninsula look a good second, though I don't have a desire to live in either of those places.

Finally some good news that we (as a developed county) aren't #1 in rising cancer rates.
Education is the key to cancer prevention as it is for almost everything.

We spend so many health dollars after a disease is found but so few dollars educating on what causes disease. At least everyone in the US knows smoking is bad. But more education is needed about food choices. Cannot depend on the FDA, I suspect Megacorp's pushing their agenda (lobbyists for high fructose, dairy, etc). We are all paying for this with higher insurance rates and the overall cost to our economy and our population is mind-boggling.

I am not interested in a "nanny" government but children should be taught what foods cause disease. But food is so controversial isn't it? Even on this forum people do not want to quit eating certain foods. Such an emotional topic.

NCOT-Fair enough on the way the media scare folks with sensationalistic reporting and predictive doom. I still think the article has some merit though as cancer has been increasing in the developed world where detection methods are largely the same over the last few years. The side by side 2012 charts were the interesting part for me though, regardless of the prognostication.

I like the Daily Mail. They always has nice pictures accompanying their articles.

The surging data on the pediatric populations coming down with cancers, diabetes autoimmune disease kind of contradicts the whole "I'm living longer so therefore I'm going to get cancer" kind of thing. Even ignoring the data, we need to take a hard look at the people around us. We know that childhood obesity is a problem in even developing nations, but little is being done to address it. Michelle Obama's eat right program is kind of like a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things. It's not doing anything to address the corporatism that's involved in our food choices.

To me, it's kind of fascinating how far people will go to justify the status quo, even with the science and data is showing the definite harms. People seriously need to wake up. This is reality.

Combining all types of cancer then creating a chart of detected cases and one of fatalities is completely meaningless and does nothing to support their point. You need to age adjust and adjust for types of cancer. In Asia for example, cancer from smoking and as a result of infectious and alcoholic hepatitis make up a much larger percentage than the US. The fatality rates for those cancers are 80+% with treatment. Does this chart look familiar:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_countries_by_number_of_cigarettes_smoked_per_adult_per_year.svg

The US leads the world in detecting and "curing" prostate and breast cancers that would never have killed the elderly patient. People in the developed world rarely live long enough to get these cancers and nobody knows if they do live that long. How does that throw off the chart? Prostate cancer has a fatality rate of less than 1%. Breast cancer is around 10% and certain types are what kill most patients. That is without early detection.

Sound bite journalism. Needed a 10 page article with 75 charts. No question that diseases of prosperity are going to kill more people when they live longer and guzzle booze, smoke and eat twinkies. A more interesting comparison would be countries with high life expectancy then comparing differences in diet, smoking...and resulting cancer diagnosis and mortalities.

Oh and the chart of cigarette consumption above doesn't take into consideration that the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe have far less children as a percentage of the population than countries in the Mideast, Africa and SE Asia. 8 year olds don't smoke but might take up the habit and they don't die of lung cancer.

While bad diets cross all economic lines the fact is that the poorer people eat worse simply because it is cheaper, much cheaper. While you can take middle income to richer people and show them they can alter their diets for roughly about the same amount of money they are spending now, you can't do that for the poor. The fact is sodas, bags of potato chips, doughnuts, bologna and hot dogs are much cheaper than eating healthy. And, lets be honest, you need enough money left over from your McDonalds paycheck to buy petfood for pets you can't really afford, lottery tickets, beer, and cigarettes. While schools try altering the cafateria foods they offer just about all get failing grades anyway.

"The fact is sodas, bags of potato chips, doughnuts, bologna and hot dogs are much cheaper than eating healthy."

Yeah if you are lazy and refuse to cook your own meals. It probably doesn't help that supermarkets figured out about 20 years ago that pushing junk makes them more money and so does marking produce sky high and throwing most of it away.

These days, even eating junk isn't cheap...a bag of apples for example is still cheaper than a bag of chips, the apples are healthy, the chips are not, the bag of apples will last longer, the bag of chips is usually gone in one sitting.

AZYooper said...
"All this harking back to a golden age that never existed anywhere is absolutely baffling to me. I can understand old people being nostalgic for their youth, because they are hankering after a time when they were more innocent, happy, etc. - not the world, but them. I can understand that, and have quite a bit of sympathy towards it, but to hanker after a mythical past that you weren't even alive to experience: it just baffles me."

??

Your post wasn't there when I posted that, and was not what I was aiming at...

It was more of a general rant aimed at a certain type of thinking which catastrophizes everything in the present/near future.

Wow...some negative reaction to the article. I still thought it was an interesting juxtaposition even if it is lumping many different factors into two charts.

Japan kind of refutes the argument that the only reason western countries are seeing the highest cancer rates is because they're living longer. The Japanese have one of the if not the highest life expectancy of the 'western' countries yet are in the lower category with most other Asian nations, including Taiwan. South Korea is in the highest category with the European/Anglophile countries.

I found it interesting anyway :/

Also found this while poking around: Families from 15 countries pose for a picture around a week's worth of their food

thoughtcatalog.com/madison-moore/2013/05/15-photos-of-a-week-of-groceries-from-different-countries-around-the-world/

Post Edited (Levi) : 2/4/2014 11:52:30 AM (GMT-7)

Levi said...
The Japanese have one of the if not the highest life expectancy of the 'western' countries yet are in the lower category with most other Asian nations, including Taiwan.

Japan doesn't do that wonderfully:
globalcancermap.com/
www.wcrf-uk.org/research/cancer_statistics/world_cancer_statistics_overall.php

AZYooper

Thanks for that interactive link, really fascinating. I went to USA rankings and yep Coronary Heart Disease is #1 cause of death no matter what age, sex etc.

There are some weird countries with very low death rates worldwide however. Makes me wonder.
I was impressed at how low France's heart-related deaths were. US has good low death rate but France has it beat by miles.

Like others, I can only speculate about the motives behind scaremongering, and quackery. Less hysteria would seem appropriate, particularly when there are ill people seeking balanced information.

StealthGuardian, the link you provide is ludicrous. It leads to a story about a fictional character, used as a model for alleged prescription drug overdose deaths. It is fabricated, and contemptuous. I've seen many other such links from you, that lead to “collection sites” and opinion pieces. (Everyone has an opinion, that does not equate to fact.)

In third world countries, malnourishment is far more lethal than consumption of grains, potato chips, or non grass fed meat. I'm sure most would accept growing old and possibly dying from cancer, over dying young from dysentery or disease.
In the US in 1900, far more people died from G.I infections, pneumonia and Tuberculosis than those dying from cancer and heart disease in 2010.

Most of the first world population (which is becoming homogeneous over time) lives relatively well, even with imperfect diets!
The death rate in the US has halved over the last century, and life expectancy has increased significantly (from 50 years to 80 years.)
Because of this, newer (first world) causes of death are arising, which will undoubtedly be tackled – leading to even lower death rates, and longer lifespans. The real elephant in the room – overpopulation.