Is cancer a man made disease?

Recently there has been considerable increase in cancers and breast cancer has been detected in 3 persons in one locality in a radius of 500 meters. One person was in the adjacent house of one locality in a span of 10 years. Could it be a contagious disease?

Could the asbestos pipe lines supplying water in that locality be the cause of cancer? Pollution, excessive heat, light including fluorescent light, excessive light or any other climatic factors could be or could not be associated with cancer.

The sudden spurt of cancer needs to be investigated by medical teams but the news article quoted below from The Hindu tries to correlate it with the pollution or life style as far as I could understand it . I have always maintained that nature could be best cure for all diseases but nature could be a way of life to prevent occurrence of diseases also.

Its time the pollution levels are reduced by planting more trees and environment management is needed.

A team at Manchester University investigated ancient Egyptian remains, looking for signs of cancer, and diagnosed the disease in an Egyptian mummy for the first time — but it says finding just one case after examining hundreds of mummies proves cancer was then extremely rare. “Cancer may not depend on natural factors, as British scientists claim it is largely a man-made disease caused by lifestyle factors like diet and pollution

Professor Rosalie David, at the university’s faculty of life sciences, said: “In industrialized 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.”

Prof. Zimmerman said: “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.”

It has been suggested that in ancient times people did not live long enough to develop cancer, although people in ancient Egypt and Greece did live long enough to develop atherosclerosis, Paget’s bone disease and osteoporosis. In modern populations bone tumors primarily affect the young.

Not until they studied the 17th century did the scientists find descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers.

The first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumors occurred only in the past 200 years.“ Quoted from The Hindu :

http://www.thehindu.com/health/medicine-and-research/article832444.ece


For further reading : http://www.livescience.com/health/cancer-man-made-disease-breast-cancer-...