chief108
16th October 2010, 13:31
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Cancer’s a very real and a very big problem— it can strike everybody regardless of any social divisions, but is it a modern problem? A thousand years ago, how often did people get cancer? A study from the University of Manchester in the UK suggests that cancer is a man-made modern invention. They concluded that even rare cases of cancer from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the cause is from byproducts of technology, chemistry and innovation.
The study of remains and literature from ancient Egypt and Greece and earlier periods – carried out at Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and published in Nature – includes the first histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy.
Finding only one case of the disease in the investigation of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, with few references to cancer in literary evidence, proves that cancer was extremely rare in antiquity. The disease rate has risen massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer – proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.
Professor Rosalie David, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, said: “In industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.”
She added: “The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data.”
The data includes the first ever histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy by Professor Michael Zimmerman, a visiting Professor at the KNH Centre, who is based at the Villanova University in the US. He diagnosed rectal cancer in an unnamed mummy, an ‘ordinary’ person who had lived in the Dakhleh Oasis during the Ptolemaic period (200-400 CE).
Professor Zimmerman said: “In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization”.
My first reaction to this was “But animals get cancer— I’ve had pet mice that get cancer and I know people who have had cats and dogs that get cancer”, but then I realized that the researchers argument still holds weight considering that these animals are still living in human environments, eating human-processed food. So… I got nothing.
Read more here (http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=6243)
Cancer’s a very real and a very big problem— it can strike everybody regardless of any social divisions, but is it a modern problem? A thousand years ago, how often did people get cancer? A study from the University of Manchester in the UK suggests that cancer is a man-made modern invention. They concluded that even rare cases of cancer from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the cause is from byproducts of technology, chemistry and innovation.
The study of remains and literature from ancient Egypt and Greece and earlier periods – carried out at Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and published in Nature – includes the first histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy.
Finding only one case of the disease in the investigation of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, with few references to cancer in literary evidence, proves that cancer was extremely rare in antiquity. The disease rate has risen massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer – proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.
Professor Rosalie David, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, said: “In industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.”
She added: “The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data.”
The data includes the first ever histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy by Professor Michael Zimmerman, a visiting Professor at the KNH Centre, who is based at the Villanova University in the US. He diagnosed rectal cancer in an unnamed mummy, an ‘ordinary’ person who had lived in the Dakhleh Oasis during the Ptolemaic period (200-400 CE).
Professor Zimmerman said: “In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization”.
My first reaction to this was “But animals get cancer— I’ve had pet mice that get cancer and I know people who have had cats and dogs that get cancer”, but then I realized that the researchers argument still holds weight considering that these animals are still living in human environments, eating human-processed food. So… I got nothing.
Read more here (http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=6243)