Uh-Oh

Cancer death rates for Americans under age 50 increased in 2024

I created this graph from the CDC WONDER database of death rates for “malignant neoplasms” (i.e., cancers).

Cancer death rates should go down every year due to better medical care. For example, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphatic cancer on my 38th birthday in December 1996. A few weeks later, being on the Internet ahead of most people, I happened to see notice of a local clinical trial for the standard chemotherapy plus the world’s first successful monoclonal antibody, Rituxan.

So, I’m still here.

But … from the New York Times opinion section:

Why Are So Many Young Adults Getting Cancer?

April 4, 2025

By Daniela J. Lamas

Dr. Lamas, a contributing Opinion writer, is a pulmonary and critical care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

That is still true, although perhaps youth is less protective than I thought. The rates of what is termed early-onset cancer — cancer diagnosed in those under 50 — are rising. While the overall numbers remain relatively small, these cancers tend to be aggressive. The average person reading the headlines about this may wonder how worried to be and what, if anything, they can do to diminish their risk.

These questions come at a precarious time for science. There is a troubling possibility that the amount and quality of American research will decline over the next four years. But it seems early-onset cancer is an arena in which the interests of the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., align with scientific priorities. After all, this is about chronic illness that may be at least somewhat linked to consumption of ultra-processed foods and an unhealthy lifestyle. If Mr. Kennedy truly wants to make America healthy again, perhaps he should forgo pointless investigations into whether vaccines cause autism, and focus here instead.

Here’s what we know: Rising cancer diagnoses among younger adults are not attributable solely to increased or earlier screening. The increase is widespread across the U.S. population and across different cancer types, which suggests that the trend is related to what Dr. Shuji Ogino, a pathologist and epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, calls “societal exposure over decades.” That is to say, we are all being exposed to factors that are increasing our cancer risk, not just at one point in time, but repeatedly over years.

As a result, Dr. Ogino’s research shows that each successive generation is more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at a younger age than the one before it. So I am more likely to have a cancer diagnosis in my 40s than my parents were in their 40s.

Researchers point to multiple potential causes, many of which are related to one another and hard to parse. Unhealthy diets that promote inflammation and cancer are one possibility. There’s also increasing data that suggests chronic alcohol use can cause damaging changes to DNA that can lead to cancer. The rise in sedentary lifestyles and related obesity may have a role. There are concerns over people’s exposures to chemicals in plastic products, though the data remains meager.

This isn’t a problem that can be solved by avoiding plastic cups. This is about aggregate behavior and exposure. Every cancer diagnosis is the result of many factors — not just junk food or environmental toxins, but also genetics and bad luck. Trying to determine which personal choice to make is deeply confusing. Which is why Americans and the medical community need rigorous scientific research to guide us.

That is where Mr. Kennedy could step in.

That was my idea awhile ago. Obviously, RFK Jr. is not cut out to manage a huge agency, but he might do some good heading a blue ribbon commission into his one or two actual good ideas.

I originally graphed cancer death rates for age 0 to 49, and found much the same thing:

And got much the same result: a broad decline for the first two decades of this century followed by a small increase in 2024.

I worried that the age 0 to 49 result was due to Americans getting older on average so I narrowed the age range to 45 to 49, with the result you see in the first graph.

Why did death rates from cancer for a particular age group stop going down a couple of years ago and rise in 2024?

Covid?

The covid vaccine?

Covid-related obesity? (To my surprise, getting fatter doesn’t increase your number of cells, just how fat each cell is. On the other hand, being tall like me means you have more cells that might malfunction and try to kill you, like some of mine did in the later 1990s.)

The general increase in shoddiness in American life during covid?

Who knows?

But we need to find out.