<story><title>Cancer under age 50 increased 80% from 1990 to 2019</title><url>https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049#DC1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>twothreeone</author><text>Figure 3 shows incident rate changes in percent by country, it seems there are stark increases in South American and African countries and mainly declining incident rates in western countries. Intuitively, I would associate increases in those regions with increased access to medical care there - so, overall a good thing?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>safety1st</author><text>Yeah, that map looks a lot like developed world vs. developing world. So two major factors here almost certainly are:&lt;p&gt;1) Fewer people in developing countries are dying from other things than they were 30 years ago, for example malnutrition and maternal or infant mortality.&lt;p&gt;2) Better diagnostics and screening. Screening is a big deal, in a sufficiently immature medical system you&amp;#x27;ll have people who die of cancer that never even get diagnosed. Start doing better screening and you will find and treat these cases earlier.&lt;p&gt;The fact that one of the biggest increases was in prostate cancer supports this idea (at least to my layman&amp;#x27;s eye). Prostate cancer tends to remain benign for a long time so you won&amp;#x27;t catch it without screening.&lt;p&gt;If you look at the right-hand column you will notice, compared to the West, there&amp;#x27;s barely any cancer in Africa! (Incidence rate is very low) Of course that isn&amp;#x27;t because no one gets cancer in Africa, it&amp;#x27;s because much of the population has limited access to screening&amp;#x2F;diagnoses.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think we need to leap to the conclusion that microplastics are causing cancer to skyrocket.&lt;p&gt;In the developed world it is almost all good news. Incidence rates are flat to down over the last 30 years. Death rates are flat to dramatically down due to improved treatment.&lt;p&gt;Here is a direct link &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bmjoncology.bmj.com&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;bmjonc&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;1&amp;#x2F;e000049&amp;#x2F;F3.large.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bmjoncology.bmj.com&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;bmjonc&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;1&amp;#x2F;e000049&amp;#x2F;F3.la...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Cancer under age 50 increased 80% from 1990 to 2019</title><url>https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049#DC1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>twothreeone</author><text>Figure 3 shows incident rate changes in percent by country, it seems there are stark increases in South American and African countries and mainly declining incident rates in western countries. Intuitively, I would associate increases in those regions with increased access to medical care there - so, overall a good thing?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sdenton4</author><text>When I was living in Kenya around 2013, open pit burning was the main way of dealing with trash... And included a lot of plastics, batteries, you name it.</text></comment>