In the same spirit of upāya from Buddhism, I like to compress this type of topic into a simpler model, even if imperfect.

Here's how I model cancer, and how I judge whether something is likely to give me cancer, without trying (and failing) to memorize a million risk factors individually:

You are a collective of cooperating cells. When cells rebel, the order that holds your body together collapses, and you get cancer. Cells generally don't want to rebel. They're content as long as they get their energy, their paycheck.

But what about activities that cause frequent cell death? A sunburn, smoke in your lungs, alcohol in your bloodstream, radiation (essentially atomic shrapnel flying through your tissue). Anything that causes inflammation, especially chronically. When cells die before their expiration date, the survivors have to keep dividing to replace them, and they start to get pretty mad about it. Maybe even rebellious.

With every round of division, they are in essence "evolving" away from their cooperative nature to cope with a hostile environment. A cell doesn't care whether the collective lives or dies, and it doesn't have the capacity to reason about that in the first place.

So the question becomes: are you keeping your cells safe? Are your activities hurting them? If they're not happy, they'll rebel, and you'll die.

This is where the model earns its keep. Take obesity. It's on every risk list, but excess fat isn't what makes cells rebel. The real culprits are the conditions obesity creates: chronic inflammation, more cells that need to be maintained and replaced, a body that is generally harder to live in.

Weight loss is on the list because it's the easiest way to fix those conditions, not because thinness is protective in itself. Once you see that, you don't need the list. Anything that makes your cells' lives harder, day after day, is raising your odds, whether or not anyone has published a paper on it yet.

The math is real, but a model like this tells you which variables you actually control.

Are you sure that people should try? Will they live longer, or happier lives if they do?

From 1900 to 1950 the average US life expectancy went from about 47 to roughly 68. Penicillin and sanitation did most of that.

From 1950 through present day we added another 10 years. What most folks don't realize is that:

- 70% of those gains, or 7 out of the 10 extra years, came from cardiovascular health. Mostly because we got better at surviving heart attacks, and people smoked less.

- 19% came from infant mortaility gains (2 of the remaining 3 years of gain).

- 11% came from EVERYTHING ELSE that people did to become "healthier." So 1 year.

The US spends $5.3 trillion per year on healthcare, give or take. That's about $15.5k per capita every year. It's roughly 20% of the total GDP of the United States. That's 2 out of every 10 productive dollars going towards healthcare.

In exchange for 20% of every hour you work for your entire adult life you get 1 extra year at the end of your life.

In exchange for constantly worrying, exercising, staying up to date, eating right, etc you buy yourself one year more of life, and it's not even going to be a GOOD year. It's going to be one more year of being 80+ years old with everything hurting and constant medical needs.

Is it really worth 20% of the money you make every year for you entire life to live one extra, shitty, year?

I just don't think people have done the math on this one.

But my father died of cancer nearing age 80, (most likely mesothelioma, though we didn't do heavy tests as it was discovered late), and it was incredibly painful and miserable for him. He had fast growing tumors in his ribs, forcing bone to spike out and hit his lungs, the tumors that grew in his lungs caused constant pneumonia and kept leaving him unable to get enough oxygen to his brain to communicate for hours at a time.

Suicide is at once the worst and most effective cure for cancer.

Well, 100% likelihood is a bit silly, but the point of the person you were responding to is true -- we will all eventually die of something, and if it's not heart disease or dementia, it will almost certainly be cancer.

The question shouldn't be "will I get cancer?"; it should be, "how long do I want to live a happy, healthy, active, independent lifestyle for?" If you exercise, eat a healthy diet, don't become overweight and keep your blood pressure low, you'll maximise your changes for living well, for as long as possible.

This kind of comment lowers the level of discourse dramatically.

There are other papers that attribute something like a third of cancers to the big environmental and lifestyle factors.

All of the following affect it, and many other things do too:

- sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium intake

- exercise

- obesity

- many drugs (including ibuprofen and stimulants)

- alcohol

- smoking

- prescriptions for lowering BP

What else could it possibly mean?

Not in any country I've ever been in. Do you mean in the US?

No. But drinking every now and then makes so little difference it's not a huge concern. Drinking a lot, though -- that's more problematic.

Like most of my friends around my age, I've cut out almost all alcohol in the last few years. None of us miss it. But it's still nice to drink occasionally, and I'm not going to stop entirely.

I'm less convinced of the negatives of this than I used to be. Humans are quite well adapted to alcohol.

If it's something you enjoy, I'd say go for it, in moderation. It's probably less unhealthy than e.g. living in a city, eating processed meat, or working an office job.

https://cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/reduce-your-risk/che...

No. This is 5-10% are from inherited genetic issues, not environment. And that is the canadian cancer society saying so, not a random website or drug company. 5-10% is a monumental number of cancers. If someone came out with a drug to reduce cancers across the board by 5-10% there would be talk at the Nobel commitee.

>"I casually mentioned the HPV vaccine since his daughter was entering her teens."

Is a little weird to do, and seems like it might be downplaying some provocative or nosy behavior.

I last noted this backwards thinking when an early vaccine for covid at the University of Queensland was developed using a protein portion of HIV ... did this old cabal flex its power. Quite sad, despite the reasons given not to use the developed vaccine, didn't pass the pub test.

The former of course is (uncomfortably) why we have seen a resurgence in smallpox, measles, and scabies.

And no, renewables + batteries and nuclear couldn't have displaced coal precisely due to a lack of money and political support. Why are those constraints any less important? The goal isn't just to build renewable tech, the goal is to build a functional society that uses renewable tech. There also is a technological constraint here, fracking became viable in the early 2000s before modern battery and solar tech existed at its current price point.

You... really need to read more before forming your opinions

Solar and wind are commercially viable and provide about 30% of the electrical energy in Texas. Around 50% of California's daytime electrical energy is provided by solar and wind power. New projects are typically hamstrung by transmission permitting constraints.

While subsidies would help substantially, they aren't a necessary condition for continued adoption of renewable energy sources. Storage is probably the next big hurdle to displace fossil fuels once there's sufficient progress with transmission.