Abstract

Some bad ideas never die, like drinking and driving, American football, and refusing to take COVID precautions. Thinking that “incidence rates for cancers overall increase steadily as age increases” [1] is such an idea. It originated in the 1950’s [2], but has been thoroughly debunked since then [3,4]. Unfortunately, even the National Cancer Institute continues to promulgate this myth. Look at the age-distribution of new cancer diagnoses in the 2021 NCI report [1]. It is a bar graph, with each bar representing the number of new cancer cases per 100,000 people at each age. The cancer incidence rate does increase with age steadily, meaning regularly or at a relatively unchanging pace, but only from age 20 or so to age 60 or so. After that, the increase in incidence becomes gradually less steady until age 84, after which, incidence declines with advancing age.