Causes of Cancer Examined

“Cancer Causation Battle: Bad Environment, Not Bad Luck,” December 17, 2015.
A new study published in the journal, Nature, entitled “Substantial contribution of extrinsic risk factors to cancer development,” used quantitative measures from several different perspectives to come to the conclusion that the large majority of human cancers are caused by “environmental” factors (i.e. non-genetic), rather than intrinsic gene abnormalities or pure chance (i.e. inherited or spontaneous mutations).
The timing of this report is intriguing, since earlier this year a study in Science magazine gave an alternate view of carcinogenesis (how cancers start); those authors reported that cancers often begin with an unpredictable aberrancy or mutation in stem cells having little to do with outside influences, in other words “bad luck.” Read more.