Cancer is Man Made?

Some researchers believe that the cancer is a disease invented and spread by the human beings. There are many on the other hand, who believe that the research which demonstrated this was not conducted in the proper manner, and for that they believe that the results might have been influenced.

Currently, cancer is one of the biggest killers in the world, and it is responsible for taking the life of one in eight people. There are different types of cancer, and it is very likely that a universal cure for it will not be found very soon. What made the researchers believe that cancer is man-induced is the fact that they examined hundreds of Egyptian mummies, and they only found one who had signs of cancer. Rosalie David at the University of Manchester in England was the one who conducted the experiments, and she believes that they manage to prove that cancer was very rare in the past.

There are many people who claim that there are certain factors which can cause cancer, and almost in all of the cases, these factors are new, and have been introduced after the industrialization. The researches manage to prove that such a thing might be possible. Researcher Michael Zimmerman at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, stated that since the people from those times did not have the necessary techniques and equipment to remove the tumors, they should be visible in all of the mummies in case the person had the disease. He was the first person to identify cancer in a mummy, as he analyzed its tissue, and he discovered that it had signs of rectal cancer.

The mummy has not been identified, but it is believed that he lived in the Dakhleh Oasis during the Ptolemaic period 1,600 to 1,800 years ago. Zimmerman and David have analyzed the literature of that period in order to find out if there have been written certain things about the disease. They have also studied the medical studies of human and animal remains going all the way back to the period of the dinosaurs. They discovered that cancer was very rare in the case of the animals that lived in that period and in the case of our ancestors. There were only a few cases of beings that have been identified with the disease. The literature did not present cases of people who had cancer, and documentation about operations which had the task of removing the tumors have not been identified until the 17^th century. Documentations about certain types of cancer have only appeared in the previous 200 years.

There are certain reasons why cancer was not so widespread back then, during those times. The people used to live less than when they do now, and cancer appears mostly in the case of the elder. Since those people did not manage to live up to a certain age, they did not become sick with the disease. There were men and women from Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece who have lived long enough to develop the disease, but they didn’t.  They developed certain illnesses associated with old age, such as atherosclerosis, Paget’s disease of bone, and osteoporosis, and that tells something. Since they could become sick with some diseases that there are present nowadays, they could become sick with cancer too. The main reason why they did not get cancer, is because the factors that cause it nowadays were not present back then, and everything is related to the advancement in science, technology, and so on.

The pollution is one of the biggest factors that can cause cancer, and the diet is very influential as well. It seems that the people from that period of time were not affected by such factors and that they managed to eat a very healthy diet. David stated that “In industrialized societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death, but in ancient times, it was extremely rare.” According to him, cancer does not occur from natural causes, and it is a result of external factors, which have been created by the humans. Some say that these claims are not true, because the dinosaurs did develop cancer, and the dinosaurs existed prior to the humans, or existed prior to the development of certain technologies or factors which might have lead to the evolution of cancer.

Dr. John Glaspy, who is an oncologist at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center stated that “Cancer is very rare in modern societies in humans under age 30.” He believes that if the humans from the older periods of time would have lived as long as they do nowadays, then they would have developed cancer as well. He does not believe that the humans are responsible for the apparition of the disease, and he believes that the main reason why cancer is so “popular” nowadays is because people live long enough to develop it. According to him, that is the only sin of the modern societies. Some have said that another reason why the research is not conclusive is because of the fact that the fossils do not preserve cancer. Paleoanthropologist John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin at Madison stated that the only way of telling if a man or an animal suffered from cancer through the examination of the bones, is for that being to have had a cancer that affected the bone.

The odds for such a cancer were pretty low, and this might be one of the reasons why it seems that not too many were affected by it. There were some cases when bones which have been infected with cancer have been discovered, but the results were not conclusive. The lack of evidence does not mean that cancer did not exist back then. Hawks stated that the modern lifestyle could lead to more cases of cancer, but he stated that this might not be because of pollution. There might be certain factors which can influence the disease, but that does not necessarily mean that pollution did it. He stated that the proof for the claim, is the fact that people from those periods developed certain types of cancer despite the fact that the factors which are associated with it were not present. He stated that it is a known fact that when it comes to the breast cancer the most important thing is the age at which a woman has or does not have a child. The later a woman has a child, the bigger are the odds for her to develop breast cancer.

The women from those periods of time had children from an early age and because of it, they had lower risks of developing it. Regardless of the situation back then, cancer is here now, and it is causing lots of damage.