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Raising cancer in the youth, SEED Health's vaginal probiotics, Interstellar tech in real life

Cancer in the youth

Something that worries me even more in the long run though, is the rising risk of developing early-onset (18-49 years old) cancer: lung cancer (42% increase), gastrointestinal cancer (22% increase), and uterine cancer (36% increase).

Overall colorectal cancer mortality rates have dropped 56% from 29.2 in 1970 to 12.8 in 2021, but they’re now the leading cause of cancer death in men younger than 50 and second in women in that age group. Because colonoscopy screening typically starts at age 45, and most people think we’re still too young to get cancer, so these cases aren’t identified until signs and symptoms appear.

What are the causes? In the case of colorectal cancer, there’s a possible association with prenatal exposure to a particular synthetic form of progesterone, taken to prevent premature labour. For all of them, we could clearly point our fingers to ultra-processed foods, a sedentary lifestyle, air, water, soil pollution with carcinogens…

This only reminds me of my point in another Biotech note: the climate/sustainability narrative should’ve never been around “the planet”. Humans are selfish for good reason: the plastics dump into the oceans we eat, the gasses emit into the air we breathe, the agro-chemicals we apply to our crops we consume. Human and planetary health are inexorably linked and the numbers now speak for themselves.

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