What you posted right there, handera, is the single best example of all the contradictory discoveries we find on the internet.
For every study proving X, there’s a study debunking it and promoting Y. It can drive you bonkers!
The funny thing is that we all seem to think that the startling rise in cancer rates is solely to do with our modern diet, lack of exercise, environmental hazards, etc. Sure, there is some of that, esp. things like mesothelioma tied to asbestos, lung cancer to smoking, etc.
But people died from cancer centuries ago! There are accounts of breast cancer, skin cancers and others during pioneer times when there was no processed food, exercise was a necessity, and industrial waste was not as common as today.
The BIG difference is diagnosis. Imagine a country doctor trying to figure out why your 50 yr old father is in such pain, can’t pee and his leg “just done broke on his own”!
The poor guy probably had metastatic prostate cancer but how could anyone know? No PSA, no scans…nothing!
Now today we see a large increase in younger people getting cancer….getting ‘diagnosed’ is more like it since testing is so abundant (rampant?) today and drs. look for familial patterns of disease and start testing earlier.
We may not love the PSA test but once they can really refine it past the current PSE and onward, men will start getting tested at 40 yrs of age - and unfortunately even MORE cancer will be found and the news will be filled with the “startling rise” of prostate cancer in younger men.
But it will be the same as it ever was, to quote David Byrne, and for all that earlier testing and diagnosis some men will still die, just as they did in the Old West and in Roman times - if they lived that long in the first place.