is normal equal to average? Are there more people who get cancer than those who don't? If so, wouldn't that make it normal?
What do you mean by normal? I guess it is normal as much as everyone talks about it. It seems like everyone will develop some kind of cancer by the time they are old. But I don't know. I don't think its as common as the media says it is. Not to downplay it or anything.
We all have dormant cancer cells within us, so in that sense is cancer normal? Also, taking breast cancer as an example, 80% of breast cancers are in people over 50 years of age. Therefore, is cancer a normal part of the aging process?
I tend to believe cancer is partly the result of all the chemicals we've put into our environment, especially in our food and in the air. Pesticides, preservatives, artificial colors/sweeteners/flavours, air pollution, the list goes on and on.
No. It typically requires several mutations for a cell to become ‘cancerous’. We don’t start out with all those mutations. The only way you could argue we have “dormant cancer cells” is in those instances of inherited (aka familial) cancers. This is when a person inherits a strong “cancer gene” from the parents, as opposed to acquiring the mutation spontaneously during his/her lifetime. Familial cancers represent only a very small percentage of all cancers; most cancer-causing mutations are not inherited but are acquired spontaneously. A person who has inherited a familial cancer gene is much more likely to develop the cancer in question than someone who does not carry the mutation. In this way I suppose you could argue that the person has “dormant potential cancer cells”. For example, for a person who has inherited the familial colon cancer gene, it is almost certain they will develop multiple cancerous colon polyps by the time they are in their early 20’s. In such instances it is usual for the person to have a complete colonectomy in their teens in order to avoid this. Yes and no, depending on how you argue it. The majority of all cancers occur in people over 50. It is a disease of the elderly. (There are some exceptions. For instance, a few specific cancers tend to occur mostly in children, such as AML.) Cancer is not a result of the aging process per se. But, cancer requires a long time to develop as it requires the progenitor cells to accumulate multiple specific mutations. So the longer a person lives, the more chance that a cancer of one type or another will occur. This is a price of increased life spans in modern society.
No, not in my understanding of the word. Just because it's common, and widely publicised, doesn't make it the norm. The definitions are subtly different.
