Reply #28: No more than a month ago I read [View All]

[SheilaT]

an article which looked at several hundred bodies (maybe more, I can't recall the details)from I-wish-I-could-remember-how-long-ago in which the incidence of cancer (or indications of evidence of cancer), once corrected for the much higher infant, child, and youth mortality, was essentially identical to the modern incidence of cancer. It also pointed out that cancer death probably won't show up at all if all you have to look at are skeletons.

So I would take this conclusion with a very large grain of salt. So many people died so much younger from so many things, and most Cancer is a disease that comes from living long enough to get it, that to conclude it's a purely modern construct doesn't impress me.