Scientists suggest that cancer is purely man-made

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Scientists suggest that cancer is purely man-made

October 14th, 2010 in Medicine & Health / Cancer

Dividing Cancer Cells. Image: University of Birmingham

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cancer is a modern, man-made disease caused by

environmental factors such as pollution and diet, a study by University of

Manchester scientists has strongly suggested.

The study of remains and literature from ancient Egypt and Greece and

earlier periods – carried out at Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical

Egyptology and published in Nature Reviews Cancer – includes the first

histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy.

Finding only one case of the disease in the investigation of hundreds of

Egyptian mummies, with few references to cancer in literary evidence, proves

that cancer was extremely rare in antiquity. The disease rate has risen

massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer –

proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.

Professor lie , at the Faculty of Life Sciences, 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.”

She added: “The important thing about our study is that it gives a

historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on

the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have

looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data.”

The data includes the first ever histological diagnosis of cancer in an

Egyptian mummy by Professor Zimmerman, a visiting Professor at the

KNH Centre, who is based at the Villanova University in the US. He diagnosed

rectal cancer in an unnamed mummy, an ‘ordinary’ person who had lived in the

Dakhleh Oasis during the Ptolemaic period (200-400 CE).

Professor Zimmerman said: “In an ancient society lacking surgical

intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. 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 industrialization”.

The team studied both mummified remains and literary evidence for ancient

Egypt but only literary evidence for ancient Greece as there are no remains

for this period, as well as medical studies of human and animal remains from

earlier periods, going back to the age of the dinosaurs.

Evidence of cancer in animal fossils, non-human primates and early humans is

scarce – a few dozen, mostly disputed, examples in animal fossils, although

a metastatic cancer of unknown primary origin has been reported in an

Edmontosaurus fossil while another study lists a number of possible

neoplasms in fossil remains. Various malignancies have been reported in

non-human primates but do not include many of the cancers most commonly

identified in modern adult humans.

It has been suggested that the short life span of individuals in antiquity

precluded the development of cancer. Although this statistical construct is

true, individuals in ancient Egypt and Greece did live long enough to

develop such diseases as atherosclerosis, Paget's disease of bone, and

osteoporosis, and, in modern populations, bone tumours primarily affect the

young.

Another explanation for the lack of tumours in ancient remains is that

tumours might not be well preserved. Dr. Zimmerman has performed

experimental studies indicating that mummification preserves the features of

malignancy and that tumours should actually be better preserved than normal

tissues. In spite of this finding, hundreds of mummies from all areas of the

world have been examined and there are still only two publications showing

microscopic confirmation of cancer. Radiological surveys of mummies from the

Cairo Museum and museums in Europe have also failed to reveal evidence of

cancer.

As the team moved through the ages, it was not until the 17th century that

they found descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers and the

first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumours have only

occurred in the past 200 years, such as scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps in

1775, nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761 and Hodgkin’s disease in 1832.

Professor – who was invited to present her paper to UK Cancer Czar

Professor Mike s and other oncologists at this year’s UK Association

of Cancer Registries and National Cancer Intelligence Network conference –

said: “Where there are cases of cancer in ancient Egyptian remains, we are

not sure what caused them. They did heat their homes with fires, which gave

off smoke, and temples burned incense, but sometimes illnesses are just

thrown up.”

She added: “The ancient Egyptian data offers both physical and literary

evidence, giving a unique opportunity to look at the diseases they had and

the treatments they tried. They were the fathers of pharmacology so some

treatments did work

“They were very inventive and some treatments thought of as magical were

genuine therapeutic remedies. For example, celery was used to treat

rheumatism back then and is being investigated today. Their surgery and the

binding of fractures were excellent because they knew their anatomy: there

was no taboo on working with human bodies because of mummification. They

were very hands on and it gave them a different mindset to working with

bodies than the Greeks, who had to come to andria to study medicine.”

She concluded: “Yet again extensive ancient Egyptian data, along with other

data from across the millennia, has given modern society a clear message –

cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.”

More information: A copy of the paper ‘Cancer: an old disease, a new disease

or something in between?’ is available at http://www.nature. … nrc2914.html

Provided by University of Manchester

" Scientists suggest that cancer is purely man-made. " October 14th, 2010.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-scientists-cancer-purely-man-made.html

Posted by

Karl Stonjek