Illustration by Elizabeth CookJOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY; C. TOMASETTI, B. VOGELSTEIN
While genetic and lifestyle factors can influence whether a person develops cancer, according to a study published in Science today (January 1), random chance also appears to play a major role.
Cancer rates among adult tissues vary substantially. For example, a person’s risk of getting lung cancer is more than 11 times that of developing brain cancer—and eight times greater than that of stomach cancer. Researchers have attributed these differences in cancer rates to environmental risk factors, such as smoking or exposure to ultraviolet light, as well as to heritable mutations. But neither environmental factors nor inherited genetic variation can fully explain the substantial variability in cancer rates across tissues. Moreover, the total numbers of cells that make up these tissues also cannot explain varying ...
