They say that their data proves that only 10 to 30% of cancers are caused by intrinsic factors, such as DNA.
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“Here we provide evidence that intrinsic risk factors contribute only modestly to cancer development”.
The researchers looked at previous studies which have shown how immigrants moving from low cancer incidence to countries with high cancer incidence soon develop the same tumour rates, suggesting the risks are environmental rather than biological or genetic.
Cancer is overwhelmingly a result of environmental factors and not largely down to bad luck, a study suggests.
The study, conducted by a team of doctors from the Stony Brook Cancer Centre in NY, disproves the “bad luck” hypothesis, which suggests that two-thirds of cancers may be attributable to random mutations in genes, the risk of which strongly correlates to the number of times a cell divides.
Professor Kevin McConway from The Open University told The Telegraph: “For many common types of cancer, this study concludes that at least 70% to 90% of the cancers are due to external risk factors – roughly speaking, that 70% to 90% would not occur if we could magic away all the risk factors”.
Smoking, drinking, air pollution and sun exposure are the external factors that increase the risk of cancer by 90 per cent.
Dr Jian-Min Yuan, of the University of Pittsburgh in the USA, said: “These results demonstrate that a large proportion of cancer is caused by environmental factors and are preventable if their underlying causes are identified”. It was published in the journal Nature.
According to NHS England, between January and March this year, 4,489 suspected cancer sufferers were urgently referred to a hospital by their GP under the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.
Depends on where, but a mouth ulcer could mean mouth cancer.
“They can’t smoke and say it’s bad luck if they have cancer”.
When it comes to cancer, we usually connect it to fate as so far there are too few known causes for this type of disease.
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The government even set up its “100,000 Genomes Project” to try and find the genetic causes of many rare diseases and cancers. This is not really novel in itself, and we already know for many cancers some major avoidable risk factors.
