42% of Britons Will Get Cancer, Statistics Show

By on July 16, 2011 in News 4

There’s something wrong with our civilization when you have a better (worse?) than 40% chance of getting cancer in your lifetime. Denis Campbell writes in Guardian:

It was one of the starkest statistics about the nation’s health — that one in three of us would get cancer. Sadly, the figures have just got worse. Cancer experts now believe 42% of Britons will get the disease.

Macmillan Cancer Support has revised the figure after its researchers analysed official data covering diagnosis of cancer, death from the disease and overall mortality. Of the 585,000 people who died in the UK in 2008, 246,000 of them — 42% — had been diagnosed with cancer at some point.

The one in three figure has been used by cancer experts, campaigners and ministers for a decade. It is based on the fact that research into every death in the UK in 1999 showed that 220,000 people — some 35% of the 630,000 total deaths — had previously been found to have the disease.

Read More in the Guardian

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  • Wizard troll

    Well with horrible  food like that its no wonder. You are what you eat and Brits eat cancer.

  • Smoog

    Traffic fumes, concrete, tarmac, grey pavement,
    grey skies, smoke drink, work stress, bits of plastic in food from microwave
    meals and general packaging, washing up liquid surfactants, general cleaning product chemical vapours, fertilizers/pesticide residue on your vegetables, lipstick and petroleum
    derived lip balm, lack of sleep, lack of daylight exposure, rising bills adding to stress, lack of
    exercise, too tight a fit of bra, electricity fields, pylons electricity fields, WiFi radiation, plastic tooth fillings, crap friendships, weird viruses, meat galore… a comfy carcinogenic minefield that is too often faithfully defended as progress/civilisation.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Yeah…but they sure know how to make beer. In London I practically lived on Guinness and chips while hiking through the city touring. Don’t let the legends fool you…there’s great food to be found in London…if you know where to look.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I’ve yet to track down a solid year by year chart of average cancer stats for the US. I’d love to know the degree to which its frequency has increased. Given that two of my exes have lymphoma and others have had benign growths and tumors removed…all before hitting 40…I’d say that the rates are getting pretty effing high…but without solid numbers to back that up its all just conjecture.