Doctors Concerned Over Rising Cancer Rates in Young People
People under the age of 50 are getting cancer at a higher rate than ever before, and doctors have no idea why. According to the Wall Street Journal, the shocking death of beloved actor Chadwick Boseman in 2020 from colorectal cancer at the age of 43 appeared to wake the public up to a growing trend that researchers had been warning about for a decade.
“Colorectal cancer was the canary in the coal mine,” remarked cancer epidemiologist Timothy Rebbeck of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Soon after, there appeared to be an explosion of all types of cancers, many of which involved or were near the gastrointestinal tract: appendix, pancreatic, stomach, and uterine.
According to the WSJ, the incidence of colorectal cancer in younger people has increased significantly in recent decades, with one in every five new patients diagnosed with the disease being under the age of 50 in 2019, a rate that had doubled since 1995, according to an American Cancer Society analysis last year.
“We are seeing more and more young people who don’t fit the classic teaching that cancer is a disease of aging,” Monique Gary, medical director of the cancer program at Pennsylvania’s Grand View Health Centre, told the Wall Street Journal.
Meilin Keen, 27, is one such young cancer patient who had her stomach removed at the end of 2023 due to a gastric cancer diagnosis. Keen told the newspaper that she had to postpone taking the bar exam because the brain fog from chemotherapy made studying too difficult, effectively putting her dreams of becoming a lawyer and relocating to New York City on hold.
Keen was understandably surprised to be diagnosed with cancer in her 20s, despite having suffered from stomach issues such as acid reflux and heartburn since she was a teenager.
“I didn’t think much about cancer until I got it,” she told the Wall Street Journal. “It messes with your identity.”
GI Cancers More Common in Young People, Causes Uncertain
GI-based cancers, such as Keen’s, appear to be more common in young people than other types, and the reason for this is unclear. There has been a lot of educated speculation about what’s going on there, ranging from research into how much time young women spent watching TV as children to many other studies on nutrition, diet, and weight.
One study even claimed to have discovered a link between caesarean birth and young-onset colorectal cancer.
Regardless of the causes, doctors are dealing with an influx of young cancer diagnoses. Just a few months after Boseman’s death in 2020, the American Cancer Society recommended colon cancer screenings beginning at age 45 — though for people like Keen, that’s still far too late to catch it.
“If we’re not understanding what it is now,” Dr. Kimmie Ng of Dana-Farber, told the WSJ, “there’s another whole generation that’s going to be dealing with this.”
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