Two weeks after my fifteenth birthday, my aunt passed away from brain cancer. Ever since then, I have always wondered what causes cancer in the first place. Knowing that my aunt was a healthy person, I never was able to understand why and how she had cancer. Over the past five years, a lot of my thoughts have been focused towards cancer. Where did cancer come from, and was it caused by humans? Could wild animals get cancer? If cancer is not found in wild animals, then why don’t humans revert their lives to simpler, and more natural ones like hundreds and even thousands of years ago?
The American Cancer Society proved that cancer has been around for thousands of years. Cancer was present in ancient Egyptian times, and the Gods were blamed for this. There have been multiple different theories regarding cancer and where it comes from, ranging from the trauma theory to the chronic irritation theory. During the 17th and 18th centuries, many believed that cancer was actually contagious, which we now know to be false. I do not think there would be any humans left on Earth if cancer truly were contagious.
Because of our highly advanced technology, we now know many things that cause cancer. However in many cases, such as my aunt’s, the cause of cancer is a mystery. We all know a few basic things that can cause cancer, such as smoking, the sun, and asbestos. According to the WHO, 30% of cancers are preventable, but what about the other 70%? Some parts of cancer will always remain a mystery. In order to find a true cure, we must first find direct causes of cancer, and how it manages to spread itself through the body.
While not as common as in humans, cancer can also be found in wild animals. Now the question is whether or not we are causing these animals to get cancer because of our actions? Environmental Health News has gathered research from numerous species. They have proven that while many animals such as sea turtles, whales, woodchucks, and Tasmanian Devils can all have cancer, they are a result of natural causes such as viruses, genetic factors, and tumors. However, cancer attacked many other animals due to pollution and toxic compounds. Scientists hope to monitor wildlife populations and their cancer patterns, in hope of being able to find early warning signs in humans. Cancer in wildlife shows up relatively early, while in humans, symptoms can take up to decades to appear.
On a study conducted on mammals, over 100,00 wild animals were examined. Only 22 had tumors, and cancer had only caused death in a few of them. This death rate is 5,000 times lower than humans’. This study, along with many others, has proven that while wild animals do get cancer, it is very rare, and that death due to cancer is even more unlikely.
Even though wild animals do still develop cancer, they do so at much lower rates than humans. This makes me wonder how many things we as a species have produced that allow cancer to thrive. Even though humans becoming more natural in their everyday life will not completely end cancer for good, I believe that it would exceptionally decrease the rates of cancer that we see today.
I think the assessment of humans should live more simply because animals living in more primitive ways and having less cancer is a perfect example of correlation not equaling causation. Animals living simpler lives is not the reason why they have less cancer, so humans living simpler lives would not reduce the number of people effected by the disease. Engaging in less harmful activities such as smoking less tobacco and staying out of the sun are much easier and much more effective ways of preventing cancer, but as previously mentioned, the most common reason for developing cancer is genetics. There is nothing we can do about genetics causing cancer, but hopefully (soon) someone will save the world and find a cure.
I am so sorry for your loss, but I thought your post was very interesting. I think that even with it’s popularity today, a lot of people don’t know what cancer really is. I had never even thought of other animals contracting cancer and I think that was a very interesting question to try and answer. You mentioned that you were curious to know what things we have produced that allow cancer to thrive, so I did some research. According to this American Cancer Society article, the biggest causes of cancer are genetics (which we can’t really do anything about), tobacco (which is still pretty prominent in today’s society, but there are many movements to halt it’s use), diet and physical exercise (which definitely have promoting movements), UV exposure (which is covered by the sunscreen movement), and Radiation exposure (which doctors try to limit during procedures). The only cause on that list that humans produce would be tobacco and maybe diet and exercise. The good thing is that most people know that tobacco causes cancer and that they should eat healthy and be more active. Based on all the research being done by the American Cancer Society, this article is probably a pretty good assessment of the documented causes of cancer up to date and it seems, at least to me, that we are doing our best to avoid and promote the avoidance of these causes. You wrote a great post and I hope this information is useful to you!