"Living conditions in ancient times were very different; there were no pollutants or modified foods, which leads us to believe that the disease is not necessarily only linked to industrial factors," she said.

Why would any one assume the disease IS caused by unnatural man made causes, other than, of course, the fact that almost the entire scientific community is made up of politically correct, rabid, liberal green weenies. No wonder we can't get to the truth about global cooling....I mean warming...... I mean climate change. Sorry, The problem has changed names and faces so many times in the last fifty years, I can't keep up.

Sure would like to know what chemical company funded this study. By now, most people know that genetics loads our gun and the environment pulls the trigger. We all have a different level of tolerance to environmental toxins. Some people can be exposed to higher levels with little to no effects whereas another person may develop a tumor at a relatively low dose. Luck of the genetic pool. Well water, especially deep wells, are usually high in heavy metals. Ask anyone in India about well water and arsenic and that was a pretty recent contamination problem. Arsenic and lead are the usual culprits in deep wells and they are both known carcinogens. So I find this study quite flawed, not in its findings (yet) but in its author's conclusion.

"Sorry, The problem has changed names and faces so many times in the last fifty years, I can't keep up."

Actually it's only changed 3 times... and you seem to know them all... in the order in which they occurred.

now that is classic ,,and shows sir you have class...best part of the whole story was your comment.

Since camels didn't exist in Egypt at that time, or if you are referring to the cigarette brand, tobacco doesn't cause prostate cancer, I'd say the answer is unequivocally no.

good sense of humour.......Jimcolorado and doug

Yarc stands for no sense of humor in Egyptian.

YOU, sir, get my vote! :)

Hee hee hee LOL :)

He probably got it from all that second-hand smoke while being a jackals dealer at the Luxor.

Too funny! Brilliant observation.

very clever Doug!

Camels are too hard to keep lit. The humps full of water, you see....Ba dum bump!

LMFAO.... wonder where he put the butts when he was done with them ..

They didn't smoke camels - - they did something else.

Must have been an unfiltered one.

I've seen many camels, but never one with a filter.

Yes, and the structure of the average Egyptian dwelling shows that their charcoal fires were lit indoors, so they got to breathe all that, um, what do we call it now that this guy says it's not pollution? I know I've read findings that the ancient E's had a lung cancer problem for this very reason, and if it's in the lungs, baby, it's everywhere.

There was neither tobacco nor marijuana in Egypt at that time. Wood and charcoal were burned for heat, he certainly inhaled that.

What do you suggest he smoked, Trace?

Yes, and the way they smelted metals in-town released large amounts of lead both as smoke, and as liquid wastes that were disposed of in a variety of ways. The ambient levels of lead in Greenland ice cores reflecting lead released into the atmosphere begin to increase about 2000 BC as more humans smelted more metal. The pre-industrial level was about 1 part per billion from aerial deposition, and slowly increased to modern levels of >10 ppb. Locally in places like the Old Kingdom in Egypt these levels would have been much higher. And, they used lead for plumbing; the word "plumbing" comes from the ancient word for lead, plumbo. So yeah, it's been around for a while.

peridot-1693859: the key word here is "might" and it is plausible that the cancer can be due to environmental factors (and not just genetic). great analysis tetrapoda!

To peridot 1693859

I believe that they did have access to marijuana back then. I could be wrong but I believe this is a relatively new discovery.

Duuude....they uncovered a mummy with a bunch of weed not to long ago, man! I just feel bad they didnt have Cheetos back then. Like, I cant even imagine not having my Cheetos after a puff puff pass. It like, makes me sad to even think about duude.

Goes to show, Life leads to death.

I read they did a lifetime study to determine that. All at taxpayers money.

I agree. How do they know how many people had cancer in those days? I doubt anyone even knew the real reason they died. One thing that always makes me wonder - where did everybody poop back then?

Go to India if you want to actually see.

123@m, and you got back from there when? Apparently you have knowledge of that time period that the rest of us aren't privy to so you must have lived there at one time, right? Amazing the wealth of information that the Internet brings, who knew we had so many time travelers among us?

No, most INFORMED people are aware of the toxic environment of that era. Lead-based pigments used in eating/driniking vessels. Smoke from fires for cooking and heating, poorly vented (air pollution). Parasites often found in corpses from that era whose intestines were not completely removed, as was invariably done for the Egyptian upper classes. As stated, no food purity or sanitation standards. Even the most affluent used chamber pots and outhouses to "do their business", so there was a far higher rate of communicable diseases. Even though Egypt was for many centuries one of the world's leading civilizations and even at this relatively late date fairly advanced compared to most of the world of that era, the average person died of other causes far before the age where cancer usually becomes a leading cause of human mortality; hence the significance of this individual.

123

I'm sure that the scientists and others took that into account when they had their 2 year study to determine whether the cancer was due to genetic-environment factors.

Yay

Rlquall ... go live in a germ free, pollution free bubble. So what you get heart disease, cancer, Multiple sclerosis, a bad case of diarrhea, if you get a mental condition, and the list goes on and on.. If you run your life afraid of everything that could possibly effect your health then you aren't living.

Hey Ralph, they did it upstream.

Studies indicate that gold is physically inert in the body, 123@M.

123 Well Said

Egyptology and Ancient History can be studied it at any college offering the courses.

The reality is there was no public health oversight, no anti-polution laws. Environmental pollutants were abound !

------------------------

Tsk, tsk! Evidently the Pharoanic bureaucracy had not yet discovered the progressive agenda. I'll bet they tolerated French fries cooked in trans fat. What's that you say...no France and no potato?

123@m, You are an idiot and I'm gonna tell you why in a condensed form.

Lead, arsenic, smoke, gold, and heavy metals did, of course occur, but not in the insane concentrated quantities that they do NOW since we have learned how to extract these things from our environment and the materials in it for modern industrial purposes.

Parasites, plant toxins, and infectious diseases in the past were controlled better because specific "agents" were localized in a way which allowed the local populations to have varying degrees of immunity to. Just like a gringo goes to Mexico and gets sick from the water yet the local population has no issue with it.

We are not talking rocket science here, 123@m

I could go on with so many examples it's not even funny, but I suspect that you are not interested in any of that because it would destroy your argument.

Peridot is right, go take a class.

Chachito, B.A. Anthropology 2005

123@m - None of your examples cause cancer - some may cause blood poisoning, brain damage, or even cellular necrosis - not cancer. I didn't realize so many of you readers were ancient Egyptian historians and scientists.

UnitedWeStand, some plant toxins can cause cancer.

I didn't realize YOU knew ANYTHING. Lol!!!

jesus christ we all know OBAMA gave them Cancer. WTF is wrong with you people,, and their was no pot back then cause clinton came in and smoked it up .. but he didn"t inhale dont worry.

I think it was more likely the carbon womanoxides that did it.

Jon -- funny on at least two levels -- bravo.

We know you're mad plumbkrazy....but be honest now......aren't you just a little pissed off too?????????

One wonders who edited her report. There were no modern industrial pollutants, certainly.

Don't forget they used to use lead for flavoring.

I think it is more there were not 7 billion folks polluting as much. Plus, who said they had metal utensils?

In Egypt 2200 years ago? Nobody has to "say", they've been known for years, at least the knives, which were the main utensil until at least the High Middle Ages. But there were also some metal pots even before that time as well.

I ask again, who said they had metal utensils. I failed to read that part in the article of the finds with the mummy.

Bronze utensils would leave toxic particles in the food. If all you know of Egypt is what you read in the article, perhaps you should read more books about ancient Egypt? Knowledge isn't always spoon fed to us, it's also what we learn on our own.

Nice pun on the spoon part Peridot. I think you forgot an i in your name though.

There is likely never going to be "the cure", as cancer is a multifacted condition with many causes and manifestations. It's not going to be solved like the Salk vaccine did for polio, one shot and now you won't get it. This idea that one day they are going to find "the cure" for cancer, or have found it and are sitting on it for business reasons, is completely silly. More tinfoil-hat conspiracy B.S., like you could sit on something like that and nothing leak out, especially in this day and age.

My daughter just died of cancer, and the entire medical process from the beginning to the end, was nothing short of a farce. The oncologist/doctor messed up with the first surgery, couldn't recognize the fatty abdominal tissue cancer on the cat scan, and so he cut through it four times...she died in a horrible death in just six months, complications from her kidneys being blown out by the chemotherapy. All the money donated to research is a joke as well...I was told by a scientist, that as he was going 'gung ho' on a project, that he was ordered by the directors of the research to SLOW DOWN, or they would have to return the funding if it was finished ahead of schedule...so much for anyone caring, they will not find a cure, because they are ALL MAKING MONEY OFF CANCER in one way or another...and we are all guinea pigs.

Very sorry to hear of your loss. The least we can afford to these diseases are our children. It is hard to grasp if you do not have a child, children, what that helplessness feels like. You just want them cured, and would do anything, and I mean anyhing, to see it happen. My sincere sympathy to you and your family Mimi.

Try not to breath to deep with the oxygen, have you ever seen what oxidation does to iron or steel. I think there's a correlation in there somewhere.

The cancer institute and researchers will never find a cure, it's a huge money machine that produces no answer to keep the researches in a job. Same thing for the space industry

Science has proven that cancer is caused by the south African "tse tse" fly. It glides around you until it effortlessly lands on your ear lobe (generally the right) and pisses. Upon quickly darting off, the piss dries and leaves a thin film that slowly penetrates the skin and enters the blood stream. After that, you're a goner.

Hey, we pay folks in this country to sit on their ass and just smoke pot. At least she did something besides watch Oprah or Occupy tents.

Oh i see they call it a syndrome instead..haha

Sour burgers. Ok. Well, based on your command of the English language, I'll take the educated folks guesses.

I am shocked at how many people on a discussion board can discount the knowledge of someone who has extended education; years of graduate and post graduate and physical experiments under their belt! I certainly hope that everyone making a comment about this Dr. Ikram has at LEAST as much scientific education as he has, anyone?

Gbaby1, the lower the education level, the higher the personal opinion of how much you think you know. That is just the inverse relationship of intelligence.

gbaby1, Dr. Ikram id a she, not he. Thanks for your knowledgeable post.

Gaby, I think people are questioning things because the article isn't providing enough information as to how the researcher came to this conclusion.

Although there were far less industrial pollutants at that time, we all know that something as simple as eating too much bbq can contribute to cancer. Based on how these people painted their bodies and faces, cooking over a fire, etc, it calls into doubt the conclusion of the researcher.

If the article showed how the researcher came to the conclusion, the comments might have been different.

@Sally from PA - oh boy you couldn't resist your god has a actual time & date for when we die ? what a horrible thought it would mean anything you did was pointless that free will was an illusion how would we find meaning in your lives ?

yes of course this is satire

I know we have a date, cause Steven Wright said he has an expiration date on his Birth Certificate.

No, I think it was the aliens that did.

wrong the increase in reported cases is due to the increase in population... compare apples to apples. And if it were just cigarettes that were the root cause of cancer then why pray tell are there many people these days that are afflicted and they have not smoked and haven't been around those that do? hmmm?

I always thought that it was the "tars" that caused cancer and the nicotine that caused high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, etc. Of course, the nicotine is what causes the addiction that keeps you coming back for the tars.

ADD is so over-diagnosed here in the U.S. it's not funny. I'm not going to go as far as Tom Cruise and say that it doesn't really exist, but it seems like one boy in five here is treated for it at some point growing up. It seems very unlikely to me that there are more boys with it here than the rest of the world combined. I think that a lot of early educators, overwhelmingly female, see a lot of typical male behaviors as being pathological, and that this plays right into the hands of overly aggressive drug companies, who get the bulk of their profits from this, the last largely-unregulated (with regard to pricing) market in the advanced world.

A considerable part of the increase in autism is increased recognition. When I was young, autistic kids were largely just lumped in with Down syndrome kids as being "retarded". The Down kids were differentiated as being "Mongoloids".

Yes, the water is full of chemicals from agricultural use. It's also full of drugs, not just from veterinary uses but also from the fact that many people flush their old drugs and also that the body actually "uses" very little of most drugs, especially those taken orally. The bulk of each dose just passes through unmetabolized, undigested, etc., right out into the environment. This is probably what is happening to the frogs and other amphibians, and all of those male fish with female characteristics to give an example that seems to be occurring increasingly.

But this mummy does seem to be proof that cancer well predates any aspect of industrialism; that fact nonetheless does NOT disprove that the modern environment may well be aggravating some people's predilection toward having cancer at some point in their life.

Yes, there were, Susie. Remember those who had 'Runs with scissors' stamped on their report cards? They were the ones who had ADHD (were hyperactive).

How do we know he died of it. Folks back in those days rarely lived beyond their 40's.

Mummies get whole body CT scans and radiographs rather than dissections after unwrapping, because that process is destructive. These tests are studied to determine how they lived and how they died. If cause of death is present, biopsies are taken.

Prostate cancer proceeds in a specific way and the cancer cells can be identified. Yes, even 2,000 years later.

Looks like they found his cigar too.