IMPORTANT POLL: Scientist questions link to cancer - PLEASE RESPOND

General Discussion
#1

Do or did any family members in your direct blood line have cancer?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Hi Everyone

One of the scientific groups that I am in close contact with is hypothesizing that a genetically determined dis-balance of enzyme activity related to deacetylation and methylation could be involved in this problem (not root cause, but involved). These scientists are specialized in cancer research.

(De)acetylation and methylation are known to play a key role in cancer. If this hypothesis were true, we should see a higher incidence of cancer in the direct bloodline of guys on this forum. Direct blood line means parents, brothers/sisters and grandparents (maternal, paternal).

We would like to quickly verify if this line of thought warrants further investigation. Could everyone PLEASE participate in this poll, regardless of what you may think about this hypothesis.

If any of your parents, brothers, sisters or grandparents (both sides) have or had cancer, please vote YES
Otherwise, vote NO.

Feel free to post any comments in the thread, specially if you voted yes (it would be interesting to hear what kind of cancer).

THANKS!

#2

Yes, prostate cancer…My Grampa on my mothers side

#3

My half sister died of cancer about 4 yrs ago. But, I think that was due to pollution at her work. No other family members.

#4

yes

#5

No cancer at all in my extended family

#6

No cancer in my extended family either

#7

Yes, paternal grandfather. Throat cancer - from smoking.

Isnt cancer a very common form of death? Are you looking for a specific types of cancers?

#8

no cancers in mine

#9

The prevalence of cancer in the US population in 2007 was about 3.7% (11,7 Mio. in about 300 Mio. total US population in 2007). If we find anything over 5% prevalence in this poll, we will need to investigate this hypothesis further.

Cancer is a complex disease which involves a number of factors coming together. One is environmental influence, another is genetic predisposition. A major element of predisposition is the (genetic) regulation of deacetylase and methylase class enzymes. In other words, smoking alone is generally not enough to kill you if you don’t have other elements of predisposition.

These scientists suspect that the regulation of these enzymes may also be playing a role in our problem, perhaps being an important factor of persistency. Cancer is all about the aberrant deregulation of signaling pathways (often triggered by environmental influence), just like our problem probably is (a drug is also considered environmental influence).

Let’s just see where this poll takes us. If the numbers stay anywhere near to where they are now, the scientists will need to investigate this subject in more detail.

#10

You are wrong. The 3.7% is the proportion of people with cancer, and not the proportion of people that have at least one ancestor with cancer. The latter group is much bigger than the former.

Two ways to correct the error:

  1. change the poll to “Who has cancer among us?” and compare the result to the incidence of cancer in a population of similar age
  2. change the poll to “How many of our ancestors have or had cancer?”. To implement this poll, you should ask everybody to provide information on their ancestors. For example, 2 of my ancestors died of cancer, out of 6 ancestors of whom I know the cause of death. So, I count as “2 positive and 4 negative”. Then, you compute the global proportion of positives among the negatives.
#11

You’re right about the 5%. But there is no need to correct the poll because that is what has been asked for. Just let the scientists decide if the result that we will tell them is worth further investigating or not.

#12

Yes.

#13

Yes grandfather

#14

All four grandparents had it.

#15

My mother’s sister died to cancer at a young age (somewhere in her 20’s) and uh grandfather’s brother died to cancer. Otherwise we got a pretty wide family and statistically speaking there isn’t so many deaths from cancer. My two grandfather’s died to a heart attack and to old age (heart failure if i understood right). More about heart problems than cancers i guess.
My mother did have a skin cancer at forehead but she has a very bad skintype/very easily burnt skintype and it was growing in a mole.

So i don’t know what to answer!

#16

That sounds like a “yes”. Again, sunburns alone, etc. are not sufficient to get skin cancer. You need additional predisposing factors to get it. It seems like your mom has these. I hope she is doing well.

#17

Do benign tumors have any relevance in this?

#18

Nearly all families will have someone with cancer - unless they died of something else beforehand. Cancer is an inevitability of growing old. If nothing else gets you cancer will. I’m not sure this is relevant especially since different types of cancers have different risks e.g. BRCA1 for breast.

#19

none here

#20

Bingo.

[Dad had bladder cancer]