There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer or fatty foods cause it

Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by EGreg on Sunday April 27, 2014 @03:57PM (#7656559)

Cancer is like a random process. When enough mutated cells gets into a certain neighborhood of events which lead to cancer, that's how it starts.

When I went to Aruba with my friend, a sailor there told us that most sailors eventually got melanoma from being out allthe time. That's what made me realize this.

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by hamai on Sunday April 27, 2014 @04:04PM (#7656595)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515569/

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by revelation on Sunday April 27, 2014 @04:40PM (#7656762)

Only 5–10% of all cancers are due to an inherited gene defect. Various cancers that have been linked to genetic defects are shown in Fig. 2. Although all cancers are a result of multiple mutations (9, 10), these mutations are due to interaction with the environment (11, 12).

That 5% figure is much less interesting when you realize they mean _inherited_ genetic defects.

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by EGreg on Monday April 28, 2014 @09:53AM (#7659921)

Doesn't this contradict the original article?

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by wdewind on Sunday April 27, 2014 @04:54PM (#7656821)

> Cancer is like a random process.

> most sailors eventually got melanoma from being out allthe time

These two statements seem in conflict to me.

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by gohrt on Sunday April 27, 2014 @05:00PM (#7656850)

Why?

It's lke saying "Craps is a random. If you roll the dice at Vegas all the time, eventually you will lose your bankroll."

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by beaner on Sunday April 27, 2014 @05:34PM (#7657010)

Because they are in conflict. "Cancer is like a random process" is saying that it can happen equally to anyone. "Most sailors eventually got melanoma from being out all the time" is showing that it does not happen equally to anyone. Your example isn't accurate.

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by watwut on Monday April 28, 2014 @11:08AM (#7660404)

Random means unpredictable/non deterministic, it does not have to be equally distributed. Normal dice throws 6 with the same probability as 1. Biased dice that throws 6 twice as much as 1 is still random, but it does not throw numbers equally

Smokers have significantly higher chance to get cancer then non-smokers, but they are not guaranteed to have it. Both smokers and non-smokers can get lung cancer and it is biased random whether you will get it or not.

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by refurb on Sunday April 27, 2014 @05:44PM (#7657051)

I don't think saying cancer is random means anyone can get it. It could also mean when you are exposed to a carcinogen, the impact is random.

You could smoke cigarette's and never get lung cancer. You could spend your whole life in the sun and never get skin cancer.

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Re:There’s scant evidence that healthy foods prevent cancer ... by mason240 on Sunday April 27, 2014 @06:14PM (#7657178)

I think what he is trying to say is that the baseline for getting cancer is random, and there really isn't much you can do you reduce the chances of it happening.

However, you can increase the chances of happening through things like excessive sun exposure.

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