NOT Scientific: Scientists say cancer 'is purely man-made' after finding almost no trace of disease in Egyptian mummies

This is a great debunking from theblogprof


Saturday, October 16, 2010

This has made the rounds in news circles for a couple of days now. The claim that is not only dubious, but is flat out non-scientific. Here are some snippets from the article that first appeared in the UK Mail Online:

Cancer is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life, a study of ancient remains has found.

Tumours were rare until recent times when pollution and poor diet became issues, the review of mummies, fossils and classical literature found.

...'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 industrialisation.'

...Despite slivers of tissue from hundreds of Egyptian mummies being rehydrated and placed under the microscope, only one case of cancer has been confirmed.

...Professor David, who presented the findings to Professor Mike Richards, the UK's cancer tsar and other oncologists at a conference earlier this year, 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.

Nothing in the above article is scientific in the least, and here's why: 1) The sampling size is far small and the life expectancy back in those days was too short for major cancers to appear in the general population. That is true even to this day. The majority of cancer occurring in society does not occur to children, teenagers and young adults but rather t mostly to people at an advanced age.

2) The sun can and does cause cancer. So do other forms of radiation. Radioactive material in the soil was more present thousands of years ago than it was today. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are the result of incomplete combustion were around thousands of years ago just as they are today. VOCs, like many other compounds found in nature, are carcinogenic. The claim that all cancer is due to the industrial revolution has no basis in fact.

3) These 'scientists' are neglecting the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or are rather ignorant of it. In essence, it demands that complex systems, ones with a great deal of information, decay into a less ordered form. I have blogged about that law many times (this is just one example but you can also hit the '2nd law' tag for others). But here's it's implication - as time goes on we will see a higher and higher incidence of cancer in society. This is the 2nd law acting on our genes. As DNA copies itself over and over and over again, and imperfect genes are handed down from one generation to the next, the statistical probability of something going wrong will necessarily increase. If you go backwards in time, there were fewer copy imperfections going all the way back to Adam and Eve when there were no imperfections. Imperfection began when the 2nd law was imposed on us at the fall of man:

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life. -Genesis 3 (NIV)

19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.- Romans 8 (NIV)

UPDATE: Speaking of cancer, there was this over at Instapundit:

PHYSICS SAYS cellphones can’t cause cancer. “Cell phones cannot cause cancer, because they do not emit enough energy to break the molecular bonds inside cells. Some forms of electromagnetic radiation, such as x-rays, gamma rays and ultraviolet (UV) radiation, are energetic enough to break the bonds in key molecules such as DNA and thereby generate mutations that lead to cancer. Electromagnetic radiation in the form of infrared light, microwaves, television and radio signals, and AC power is too weak to break those bonds, so we don’t worry about radios, televisions, microwave ovens and power outlets causing cancer.”

Actually, it's not just type of radiation but rather the dose that is important. The effect is cumulative, and dose has to do with both the type of radiation and the amount of time exposed to it: The Fermi Chronicles - Part 4: Radiation Types and Radiation "Dose"