Community News
The Cancer Epidemic – Cancers among young adults have become a global health crisis; Why is that?
BY SIMONE J. SMITH
I remember when cancer was something distant, something that happened to other people, but now, it feels like it’s everywhere. I think everyone knows someone who’s been affected by cancer. It’s become a part of our reality, a very sad reality.
Cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases of the 21st century. A hundred years ago, cancer was not so common; however, since the last couple of decades, its incidence has been rising alarmingly.
What is cancer? Put simply; cancer is the abnormal growth of cells. Cancers arise from any organ, or body structure and are composed of tiny cells that have lost the ability to stop growing. Transformation of a normal cell into a cancerous cell is probably not such a critical event in the genesis of cancer; rather it is the inability of immune cells of the body to identify and destroy the newly formed cancer cells when they are few in numbers. The risk of cancer is multiplied in people whose immune system is suppressed due to any factor including chronic stress, old age, or a chronic debilitating disease.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the National Cancer Institute, one in five new colorectal cancer patients in the United States is under 55, That’s nearly twice the rate in 1995.
While deaths for colorectal cancer patients over 65 are going down, deaths among younger patients are increasing, a reflection of the higher mortality rates often observed in early-onset cancers. Scientists say these cancers can be more deadly because they are not caught early enough for successful interventions (colonoscopies are not recommended until age 45).
There are several hypothesis for the increase in cancer; one claim is that the increase in global obesity rates since the mid-1990s plays a significant role in the uptick, and scientists have found that specific diets, such as those rich in so-called ultra-processed foods, have been associated with a higher risk of GI cancers, regardless of a person’s body-mass index.
The increase in early-onset cancers has become undeniable, replicated in study after study. A BMJ article published last year found that the early onset of 29 different cancers, including: breast, stomach, and colorectal, had risen nearly 80% between 1990 and 2019 worldwide. Another study published in JAMA Network Open last August found that the occurrence of a wide range of cancers among people under 50 had increased between 2010 to 2019 among American adults, particularly among women.
John Marshall, Director of the Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancers at Georgetown University, has been treating patients for 30 years. Early in his career, he says, he would never have a patient under the age of 50. Today, half of his patients are in that younger cohort, many of them otherwise healthy and fit. He first started to notice the trend with colorectal cancers, but later found an increase in other cancers as well, which significantly mirrors the research literature.
Findings have also pointed to another revelation: “We have, each of us, different risks depending on when we are born,” Shuji Ogino, a Molecular Pathological Epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, shared in his research.
According to a paper published last year by a New Zealand research team, the upticks in cancers among young adults matched the timeline that we would expect from the multiplication of microplastics in the environment. Research on cellular and rodent models has suggested that microplastics (plastic bottles, packaging, synthetic textiles, cosmetics, and industrial processes) could promote tumor growth. Yeah, pretty much everything that has become commonplace in our lives. Though more research is needed, we already know these materials contain chemicals that can disrupt hormones and pose a risk to our health.
“People born in the first half of the 20th century had a lower risk of developing cancer by age 50 than people born in the second half,” Shuji shares. Other scientists increasingly suspect that exposure to risk factors at certain ages — whether: in utero, early childhood, or early adulthood. — could be playing an important role in a person’s risk of developing cancer at a young age.
Then, there are some other less researched reasons that have been illuminated. According to a recent peer-reviewed analysis, it was discovered that COVID-19 vaccines can trigger genetic changes in cancer patients that could aid in the further development of the disease in such individuals.
The review, published in the Cureus medical journal on December 17th, 2023, looked at the relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and cancer. A review of multiple studies led the authors to conclude that certain COVID-19 vaccines may create an environment that predisposes some cancer patients, including survivors, to “cancer progression, recurrence, and/or metastasis.”
The conclusion was based on two factors. First is the “multi-hit hypothesis” of cancer, which suggests that cancer is the consequence of several genetic mutations. The second is the “growing evidence and safety reports” in the Vaccine Adverse Effects Report System (VAERS), which suggested that some cancer patients who took COVID-19 vaccines saw their conditions worsen.
“In light of the above and because some of these concerns also apply to cancer patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, we encourage the scientific and medical community to urgently evaluate the impact of both COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination on cancer biology and tumor registries, adjusting public health recommendations accordingly,” the review said.
Let’s talk about why and how this is happening. MRNA vaccines have the potential to trigger a set of biological mechanisms that could lead to the progression of cancer. These effects are attributed to factors like the “pro-inflammatory action” of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and tumor-causing effects of the vaccines’ antigens, namely the spike protein. LNPs are nanoparticle drug delivery systems that can be used to deliver DNA and mRNA into a body. Researchers found that the spike protein, found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus, facilitates the entry of the virus into healthy cells.
The authors who wrote the review are Raquel Valdes Angues from the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine in Portland and Yolanda Perea Bustos from the education department in the Government of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain. They declared that they received, “No financial support” from organizations that might have an interest in their work, and they were involved in no other relationships, or activities that could have influenced the review.
Now, let’s turn to another undiscussed factor; 5G. In an article titled “Health risks from radiofrequency radiation, including 5G, should be assessed by experts with no conflicts of interest,” (Lennart Hardell, and Michael Carlberg), the researchers appealed to the European Union (EU) in September 2017. Their appeal (endorsed by >390 scientists and medical doctors), requested a moratorium on 5G deployment until proper scientific evaluation of potential negative consequences has been conducted.
This request was not acknowledged by the EU. The evaluation of RF radiation health risks from 5G technology was ignored in a report by a government expert group in Switzerland, and a publication from The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. Conflicts of interest and ties to the industry seem to have contributed to the biased reports. In the report, they note that the lack of proper unbiased risk evaluation of the 5G technology places populations at risk. They also note that there seems to be a cartel of individuals monopolizing evaluation committees, thus reinforcing the no-risk paradigm.
To bring relevance to those thoughts, I discovered an open editorial titled “Moskowitz: Cellphone radiation is harmful, but few want to believe it,” by Anne Brice. For more than a decade, Joel Moskowitz, a researcher in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, and Director of Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health, has been on a quest to prove that radiation from cellphones is unsafe, but, he said, “Most people don’t want to hear it.”
“People are addicted to their smartphones. We use them for everything now, and, in many ways, we need them to function in our daily lives. I think the idea that they’re potentially harming our health is too much for some people.”
“Cellphones, cell towers and other wireless devices are regulated by most governments,” said Moskowitz. “Our government, however, stopped funding research on the health effects of radiofrequency radiation in the 1990s.”
Since then, he said, research has shown significant adverse biologic and health effects — including brain cancer — associated with the use of cellphones and other wireless devices. And now, he said, with the fifth generation of cellular technology, known as 5G, there is an even bigger reason for concern.
The International EMF Scientist Appeal, signed by over 250 scientists with extensive research backgrounds, underscores a growing concern regarding the health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields emitted by wireless devices like cell phones. With over 2,000 published papers and letters in professional journals, these scientists advocate for health warnings and stronger exposure limits. Their research, spanning numerous animal toxicology studies, indicates a potential for increased oxidative stress, including free radicals, stress proteins, and DNA damage.
A comprehensive 2009 review published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, suggests a link between heavy cellphone use and heightened brain cancer incidence.
I want to take a moment to highlight the fact that they have attempted to blame many things for the uptick in cancer diagnosis and have ignored two major factors: the introduction of a vaccine, and fifth generation cellular technology. I liken it to the actions of the telecom industry; the comparison to the tobacco industry is striking. Just as tobacco companies once enlisted doctors and dentists to downplay smoking risks in the 1940’s, the telecom industry now utilizes a nuclear physicist to reassure policy makers of the safety of microwave radiation. This pattern echoes the tactics employed by Big Tobacco and underscores the telecom industry’s considerable economic and political influence, surpassing even that of its predecessor.
It appears that we are going to be witnessing more and more cancer diagnosis, especially of people who are much younger. This article was meant to inform and educate; I hope that you utilize this information to ensure that you take all precautions when it comes to your health. You have to care about you, because the powers that be do not!
REFERENCES:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885170/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36739075/
https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-023-01967-0
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/cancer-young-people-doctors-baffled-49c766ed
https://www.saferemr.com/2017/09/5g-wireless-technology-is-5g-harmful-to.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7405337/
https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/07/01/health-risks-of-cell-phone-radiation/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30267-6/fulltext
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2808381
https://bmjoncology.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000049#DC1
https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2021-068921