Their study of remains and literature from ancient Egypt and Greece and earlier periods – carried out at Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and published in Nature Reviews Cancer – includes the first histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy.
Finding only one case of the disease in the investigation of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, with few references to cancer in literary evidence, proves that cancer was extremely rare in antiquity. The disease rate has risen massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer – proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.
Wondering aloud.. what role could the many vaccines given to children play in this increase in childhood cancer?
Also, continuing to think aloud.....
What of all this talk of genetic "predisposition"? If the ancients didn't have cancer there should be no genetic predisposition to it. Unless? Is it possible that pollution and later vaccines and toxic factory farmed and genetically modified foods have actually altered human DNA? Making humans more susceptible to cancer?
We know exposure to radiation and many other contaminants can alter DNA
How about the overuse and abuse of anti-biotics? Not just as prescribed by doctors, how about all the antibiotic used in factory farming? There has been some recent news on antibiotics triggering asthma in infants and reducing your immune sytem to nil. A suppressed immune system would certainly lead to a plethora of diseases including asthma and cancer.
Back to the cancer as a man made disease-
Professor Rosalie David, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, said: “In industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.”
She added: “The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data.”
Some people propose that the lack of tumours in remains is due to them not being well preserved. However-
Dr. Zimmerman has performed experimental studies indicating that mummification preserves the features of malignancy and that tumours should actually be better preserved than normal tissues. In spite of this finding, hundreds of mummies from all areas of the world have been examined and there are still only two publications showing microscopic confirmation of cancer. Radiological surveys of mummies from the Cairo Museum and museums in Europe have also failed to reveal evidence of cancer.
As the team moved through the ages, it was not until the 17th century that they found descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers and the first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumours have only occurred in the past 200 years, such as scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps in 1775, nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761 and Hodgkin’s disease in 1832.
Professor Zimmerman said: “In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization”.