There is so much wrong with this post I am going to have to do one of those quote a sentence or two at a time deals.
Jubbergun wrote:
My brother has smoked since he was 15-ish, and drinks like he's afraid they're going to outlaw beer and he wants to get as much as he can before they do. He's probably also the most physically healthy person I know. His philosophy is that you're not going to live forever (and why the fuck would you want to?) so you might as well do what you enjoy and if it kills you, fuck it.
Not sure what you are trying to say here other than your brother smokes and drinks a lot and is "the most physically healthy person [you] know" which could mean anything. A person with cancer can appear healthy for years before symptoms begin to show. Typically, cancer does not happen overnight but rather over years.
The fact that he both smokes and drinks would classify him as high-risk regards to certain types of cancer. Smoking and drinking has been shown to act in a synergistic manner increasing a persons risk in a multiplicative manner rather than a additive manner. ie, if smoking increases you risk for throat cancer by 4 fold, drinking by 3 fold, then both together works out to something like 12 fold. It's actually a bit worse then simple multiplication, more like 20 fold.
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I have a hard time accepting the "carcinogen" tag on a lot of stuff because the method generally used to determine whether something is a carcinogen is this:
There is no one method. Multiple methods are used but let's see what you list.
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You take a laboratory animal that is bred to be genetically predisposed to cancer.
Not sure where you got this. Any study that did this would be rejected by any serious journal as they are clearly biasing their results. Lab animals always come from a well documented established linage to ensure no source of error (outside contamination. The researcher wants to be able to say with complete certainty that the observed increase was due to the suspected carcinogen, not something else).
In immunology there are 'clean' mice which have had their immune system knocked out in order to observe symptom of a disease but they require a highly controlled environment. Perhaps this is what you are thinking about.
Animal models are not ideal for application to humans as certain species will react differently then we do. One example I vaguely recall was with a dye which showed no increase on cancer rate for mice, but a rather large increase for Guinea pigs (also humans as the product was released based on the mouse data).
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You flood that animal's system with whatever you're testing. Basically it'd be like making a human being eat a pound of what's being tested every day.
Correct. +1 point.
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You pretend to be shocked and surprised that an animal that is bred to get cancer develops cancer after you inundate its system with copious amounts of something.
And then w/e journal you submit your results to are rejected for terrible test groups.
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I don't think medical science has a very good handle on cancer and what causes it at this point in history, either.
Very vague statement here. Which cancers are you referring to? Medical science has a very clear understanding on how cancer happens and some things that can cause it. Obviously we don't know everything that causes it (depends on the type) but that like saying we don't understand what causes the common cold.
There has been innumerous studies done on how your diet, life style, where you live, genetics, job, and so forth affect your risk for a certain type of cancer. These studies often pull their data from tens of thousands of recorded cases over the course of decades.
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The shit has probably been killing people for thousands of years
Well yes, but you were far more likely to die from some other reason before cancer could get to you before. Think about how a persons life used to be before the advent of modern medicine anywhere from ancient Rome to the middle ages. Life spans were usually less then 40 years and you were far more likely to die from an infection or your neighbor sacking your hometown.
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we just identified it and started studying it in the relatively recent past
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In fact, does anyone know if there is any archaeological evidence of cancer? That's something I'd be interested in hearing about and discussing
I was going to respond to these two points separately by
looking up the earliest case of cancer and the first link responses exactly how I need to. Saves me the typing.
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Jubber
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