Author: Evan Fleischer / Source: Big Think
- A new study is out suggesting that the taller you are, the more at risk you are of certain types of cancers.
- The reason for this is a surprisingly simple one: you have more cells.
- 18 of 23 studied cancers saw a relation between height and cancer risk.
A recent Big Think piece noted that more cancers occur by random chance than for any other reason. This said, given the apparent complexity of the disease, it seems odd to encounter a study suggesting a blanket maxim for cancer risk.
However, this is what Leonard Nunney of UC Riverside has done in The Royal Society of Biological Sciences. His claim? The taller you are, the more at risk you are of cancer. Why? Because you have more cells, and things may be more likely to go awry.There’s a caveat to this study. According to Peto’s Paradox, mice have more of a risk of cancer despite having less cells. This report assumes that cancer risk increases in relation to height within a species. It poses an interesting hypothesis about correlation and then uses that correlation to guess at the causation.
The study leaves us wondering why this theory — that more cells equals more risk of cancer — is focused on humans and, peripherally, on dogs and not on an animal with even more cells? Is there anything in particular about the stability of cells in a human after a certain point that challenges the overall integrity of the body-wide cell-structure as other multidimensional factors at play in cancer continue?
The study doesn’t necessarily make this point clear, nor does it go to particularly great lengths to explain the fact that…
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