How Old Is Cancer? 

Reading an ancient language that says "there is no treatment" is the building blocks of a good horror film

"there is no treatment" gotta be the scariest shit 💀

"there is no treatment" sent shivers down my spine

The doctor recognising there is no treatments is actually really smart. Most doctors of the time would come up with crazy theories that had no evidence

Cancer in and of itself is just a cell mutation that causes unregulated cell division, so cancer would probably be about as old as multicellular organisms are.

Lost many important people in my life to cancer. I hope one day we find a cure.

I think the larger contributor here is the fact that it’s really difficult to detect cancer without access to modern knowledge and technology

Average age wasn't 35, unless you include child mortality If you live to ~10, you can make it to your 60's

It's frightening how many people think that when we discovered and described it is the same as when cancer first happened.

I had cancer and beat it when I was 13 and it’s been 10 years since I have. So I’m thankful for modern cancer treatments

We’ve also observed dinosaur bones with telltale signs of cancer- pretty amazing to think of it in that time scale.

Average life span was low because child mortality was high. People who made it out of childhood lived past their 30s. Average life span is very misunderstood.

Thank you Natalie Portman for telling us about the history of cancer

I’m a university student, and we learned about cancer treatments pre-anaesthesia - I’m pretty sure me and every other person in the room was like “yeah no, I’ll just die thanks”

We found cancer in dinosaur bones

I was diagnosed at 14 & was paralyzed from the waist down & told I might never walk again. I’m so thankful for chemo, radiation & surgery that saved my life. I’m living on borrowed time & should’ve died many times over! I suffer from severe nerve pain/CRPS pain thanks to the tumor attaching itself to my spine. Thankfully I can walk with a cane now, over 20 years later. Cancer sucks!

The 35 age expectancy is brought down by extreme child mortality If you make it past 10, you'll probably live to your 60's

Everyone here dwelling on “There is no treatment”, but it’s “Most people didn’t live long enough to get cancer” that gets me.

This is exactly why increased use of seatbelts is linked to higher rates of cancer deaths

Thats the issue with alot of mental illnesses today and people saying "its just a trend these things never used to exist". They've always existed, we just never had the means or ressources to diagnose it

"there is no treatment" man!! that was probably devastating news for someone so many years ago...

Logically, cancer should be as old as life itself Edit: well, multicellular life

people weren't dying at 35, the child mortality rate was just much higher which brought down the average lifespan. if you did reach to adulthood you had a decent chance of living to 60. still not great but better than how you made it seem.

If you're wondering... we know dinosaurs suffered from various cancers, which is pretty fascinating.

Cancer isn't an external disease. Cancer is your own cells going rogue . Also, cancer cells are immortal and can always perfectly replicate themselves. So apparently, the key to immortality is figuring out how cancer cells telomeres dont fray when they replicate.

imagine the other things that might pop up once we find a cure for cancer

i wonder how many cancer cases got ruled down to "curses" from radioactive "cursed" items

A few people are pickup up on the "died by 35" thing, so I just wanna point out: That's the trouble with talking about average life spans and life expectancy odds - you're both right! The average of *all* human lifespans of the time *was* 35, which is relevant and true for the topic of most people not living long enough to get cancer and a useful way to phrase it when time is short. But it is also true and relevant that you look at life expectancy by breaking it down into the averages for each age group, each one having it's own odds of survival, the odds increasing as you move past each milestone. Super-high mortality rate in infancy, lower in childhood, lower again in adolescence... But explaining that takes more time, and RU-vid Shorts is a time-limited format. I'm sure, judging by her past work, that Cleo understands this and is just using the easiest-to-understand way of phrasing so a broader audience can get the point on this topic. But I think you folks have commented here because there is that common misconception that the average means most people died by 35, instead of that being the average skewed by deaths at early age. It would be cool to see Cleo do a Short on how life expectancy is measured, so more people understand that people did live to old age in the Ancient world - it's just that infant mortality and other causes skewed the average.

Also diagnosing internal diseases was insanely difficult until less than a century ago. Even posthumously, as the church vehemently banned dissection and autopsy

This video is the sanity I needed

Technically cancer is as old as the first multicellular organism with tissue specialization because that’s the minimum requirement for a tumor to be problematic. So probably 1-2 billion years ago whenever that evolution happened

An Oncologist & Paleontologist teamed up to determine a dinosaur bone showed evidence it had bone cancer before it died.

Throughout all of human history, we mostly had no understanding of why people died because we had no idea how we stayed alive. Something to do with air, water and food. But people could also just feel a pain and die.

Hippocrates (460-375 BC) had several references to cancer in his documentation. He realized that growing tumors mainly afflict the adults [7]. Also, the nomenclature of oncology is built upon his comparison of tumoral growths with a moving crab, which led to the generation of scientific terms such as cancer (a non-healing malignant ulcer) and carcinoma (a malignant tumor) [8]. He theorized that an imbalance in body humor, i.e. blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile instigates diseases [7] and that excess black bile is responsible for the development of cancer [9]. The humoral theory, which considered cancer a general disease, was the standard of medical practice through centuries because autopsies were banned due to religious prohibitions and also because its theoretical nature would leave no questions unanswered [10]. Galen (131 - 200 AD), one of the undoubtedly most influential physicians for many centuries, adopted the humoral theory but believed that the black bile was responsible for incurable cancer, whereas thin bile was related to curable cancer [11]. Throughout the Islamic Golden Age (7th to 14th century), prominent Muslim Persian and Arab scholars penned about cancer in their writings [9]. Al Zahrawi (936-1013 AD) was the first to distinguish between acute kidney inflammation and kidney cancer [9]. Cancer was assumed to have a difficult treatment, which could be probably successful only if performed at an early stage and also if the tumor was accessible, small-sized, and not adjacent to major organs for the possibility of surgical removal. Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD), known as Avicenna in the west, was one of the leading pioneers of medical science in the Islamic Golden Age [12]. He clarifies his surgical approach to early removal of a tumoral growth in his eminent work “Al-Qanun-fi-al-Tibb” (The Canon of Medicine): “All diseased tissue should be removed with radical excision, which could utilize amputation and removal of veins surrounding the growth, or catheterization if necessary” [9]

I do believe that cancer would be EXTREMELY old. Like thousands and millions of years back. Since cancer is just cell production issues, it would go wayy back

"how old is cancer" i would say as old as life itself.

I think two things can be true at once: Yes, people died of other stuff leaving certain cancers undiagnosed and hidden. But we also have exposure to a carcinogenic substance’s daily: many of which are found in our food, water, and body care products. We frequently consume and are exposed to stuff that most of our ancestors never came into contact with. (Edit: More in comments)

You make a valid point. Cancer can't kill you if you starve to death or get eaten by a lion.

My friend just died of cancer. He was super fit. Mid 30s. Still can’t believe it.

In the documentary Uranium -- Twisting the Dragon's Tail, it shows aboriginal radiation warnings signs paint in areas of uranium deposits. The painting show disfigurements to warn others to stay away. The disfigurements would have been cancerous growths.

That hieroglyph saying there is no treatment is chilling

My mom completed her twelfth and final chemo last week. We celebrated and are so happy for her 🎉❤

Cancer is just the next shonen anime villain we have to fight w/ the power of friendship and teamwork that was lurking here the whole time.

Cleo, you are the best at explaining things! Thank You

i feel like knowing you have cancer is a modern thing ie the technology we have allows us to detect and understand cancer but it's so deeply internal

Life expectancy from the 12th to 19th century, excluding child mortality, was about 55, so just at the beginning of the jump in odds of getting cancer. People were still fairly likely to die before the odds of cancer increased drastically. That said, I feel like there's a lot more to be said about the fact that cancer would have been nigh impossible to detect in the first place. There may be some cancers that have increased in the modern age, but carcinogens and genetic problems didn't spontaneously appear in the mid 19th century. They had no modern machinery. Surgery was almost a death sentence in itself. Even autopsies were considered pretty taboo until the 19th century. In many cases, cancer would likely have been attributed to something else without a visual tumor. Even for a visible tumor, it would have been difficult to impossible in many cases to tell cancer had actually metastasized and thus was the cause of death. Also, our archaeological record isn't great because many cancers start in soft tissue and aren't identifiable from skeletons alone.

60 or older u say? (Laughs in child hood cancer)

This has been something I've been wondering! I was like is cancer new? How come I didn't hear about it back in the day? Not that I was there back then!

Your enthusiasm is what makes this much more interesting.

We've had cancer as long as we've had cells, it's a thing we have always lived and died with, now there are treatments we van use to stop it in many cases Early stage Cancer isn't an end all anymore if you get the right medicine

Please keep appearing on timeline everyday thanks

People back then had a lot more to worry about than cancer, it's just that cancer became widespread due to multiple factors such as eradicating other diseases or improvements in medicine

Happy 60th birthday. You now qualify for high cancer risk. Congratulations. 🎉🎉

This makes me so happy, someday we will cure cancer completely I have been to a cancer hospital a couple of times and I have seen the patients closely and the loved ones crying after death, it is so painful to watch, some day we will cure it

It’s like unlocking a new difficulty irl

cancer is absolutely older than all human history like because of what cancer is it's probably been around since multicellular life has. Infact cancer is just when cells in a multi cellular organisms start evolveing separately from the rest and begin Replicating out of control because of damage to an original cell

Yes cancer has been around, but was rare back in the day. The product we consume add to it so much more which is why there is so many with cancer today.

I just subscribed. Her voice is so soothing, she's easy to listen to and smart

Well, yeah, I would always have assumed that cancer had existed for as long as we have, but they just didn't have a name for it and didn't know what it was

Some studies suggest the average life was way older but due to the amount of child/baby deaths, the average life expectancy is brought down to a figure that isn’t reflective of an adult’s life expectancy.

Damn, pneumonia doing some work back in the 20's

Oddly enough, Monsanto is a perfect example of why we see more cancer today than we did 100 years ago. On the one hand, the chemicals they use to kill pests and other stuff causes a LOT of disease after prolonged exposure. On the other hand, if it weren’t for massive improvements in agribusiness like Monsanto, millions of people would never live to be old enough to HAVE long term exposure to anything. You can’t die from Glyphosate-induced cancer at age 55 if you dies from starvation at age six… Just an observation. They are far from perfect and there is certainly room for improvement, but without them, a LOT of us wouldn’t be here to bitch about them.

It's important to realize that infant mortality, childhood mortality, and maternal mortality were the main reasons that 35 was the average mortality rate. "People weren't "dying of other stuff". Mothers and infants were dying in labor and children were dying of various accidents and illnesses that we still have today, but we're much better at keeping them safe from and treating with antibiotics. Also, many did and do today die of malnutrition. Even if malnutrition wasn't the direct cause of death, it often contributes to death by illness or injury. But, the main driver of those numbers was infant mortality.

cancer still remains a death sentence for most people unfortunately

Until recently, we knew so little about the human body that it probably just went undiagnosed.

I'm so fascinated by every short you make. Thank you for teaching me new things!

Cancer is also just getting more common due to environmental pollutants.

We had to put my dog down 8 years ago because of cancer. I discovered it too by a tumor in the mouth. Still miss her sometimes such a good, loving , cuddling dog.

Cancer is old as mutual cellular beings

Meanwhile my great grandfather lived for 100 years in a village

At the end she told me to go check out her video and the first thing that popped into my mind was “Ill do anything you tell me”. Ive had better moments but im not mad about it.

Absolutely. So many people in the past would have died from cancer without knowing what it was.

Given that cancer occurs in almost all living things, it is nearly as old as life, several billion years at least.

It would make sense that cancer has been around since the evolution of multicellularity mainly because of evolution and natural selection occurs via mutations in dna, which is also exactly how cancer occurs. However there is also an argument to be made that as time goes on there are different/more risk factors for cancers because of human and species activities, etc. (but that’s not as much about origins). As a childhood cancer victim (and 8 year survivor) I think the origin of cancer is a really cool area, and could potentially lead us to develop more effective treatments and potentially cures.

cancer is as old as cells

"A bulging mass in the breast”-cool, hard, dense as a hemat fruit, and spreading insidiously under the skin-could hardly be a more vivid description of breast cancer. Every case in the papyrus was followed by a concise discussion of treatments, even if only palliative: milk poured through the ears of neurosurgical patients, poultices for wounds, balms for burns. But with case forty-five, Imhotep fell atypically silent. Under the section titled “Therapy,” he offered only a single sentence: “There is none. " Emperor of all maladies .

My best RU-vidr right now

Yep....good content and yes you're amazing!

A lot of people don’t even understand how cancer comes around, so for anyone who doesn’t allow me to explain. Some Cancer comes from an overgrowth of cells in one area known as a tumor and the problem is mostly that these cells continue to multiply, (because of a mutation in the cell division or replication process) so there is no end to this. That is why people get surgeries to have these tumors removed. But sometimes in more dangerous cases the cancer can be harder to get rid of. This depends on exactly what kind of cancer it is. Sometimes in these dangerous cases, the surgery could leave one cell behind with this mutation and another tumor could sprout. Which is why some with breast cancer for example just get their breasts cut off. My cheer coach had this done and she got implants after, she is very happy with them. (Close family friend) But yeah hopefully that helps anyone who needed that!

Love your content

And fighting cancer is about to get a whole lot easier when AOH 1996 is done with human trails. For anyone unaware, there's finally a "cancer pill" and it's called AOH 1996. It's in the human trials stage right now

this video reminded me of the ancient dog ass cancer. one dog had cancer that somehow became contagious, so it is technically now a single celled breed of dog, and while i think it’s rare, is still around today! sci show made a great video about it

My launguage writes almost the exact same as the Egyptian roll you showed I thought it was my launguage for a minute-…..

Why is she so wonderful though

It's interesting to think of cancer as almost a modern privilege.

I really like your content !👍

There will be a day soon when we will be able to cure cancer completely

I'd assume if you're starting to develop pain thousands of years ago, you just may not have thought of cancer, may not have had access to a doctor, may not have developed visible lumps, and may have just died.

Cells being rebellious always

Thank you for the Info, Natalie Portman

With how far we’ve gotten we should be able to eradicate and yet we can’t.

While the consumption disease is often equaled to tuberculosis - we don't really know and the symptoms are similar. The cells in the body have been multiplying for a long time, it's weird to think mistakes have only recently started.

This is literally all the proof I need that the internet is spying on us, my aunts dog just got cancer last Wednesday and is going to have surgery on Thursday I hope everything goes well 🤞

I think it was rarer in neolithic people since they didn't eat crappy stuff

You mean aliens built the pyramids but they couldn’t cure cancer either? 😂

You couldn't fit this in your long form video but you could fit it in a 1 minute short?

She always smiles regardless of her topic. Cancer is not a joyful topic. Modern toxins from a myriad of products and food preservatives have been proven to cause cancer.

Does anyone else think that she kinda looks like Jane foster from Thor and it’s even crazier that she is talking about cancer when Jane foster in the movie was battling cancer?

My librarian said cancer is solved by oxygen and hospitals keep people sick for money.... Yeah I have been told to respect everyone's opinions (she also thinks birds are robots controlled by the govt.) And not call her insane.

Why i love her ?