Hi,

This is an interesting point you make. My own personal opinion it could be caused by a number of factors rather than one single thing. Exhust fumes especially disiel, the plastic we wrap our foods in, nuclear accidents in Russia and now Japan, smoking and our modern way of life ect all in my view contribute to the cancer statistics. If I am right, we would have to change our lifesyle pretty dramitcully and even if we changed it today it would take nature a long time get put things right, Brian.

Hello cullpepper,

Thanks for posting. You’re right to observe that cancer rates are going up, and half of us will now hear the words 'you have cancer' during our lifetime. The biggest factor driving increasing cancer rates is simply that we're living longer and cancer gets more common as we age - you can read more about this on our blog.

Although more of us are getting cancer, there's every reason to be optimistic about the future. Thanks to research, survival has doubled over the last forty years and half of cancer patients now survive - our ambition is to increase this to three in four by 2034. You can read more about this here.

Best wishes,

Lucie, Cancer Chat Moderator