Besides Lifestyle and Inherited Genes, Cancer Risk Also Tied to Bad Luck
January 5, 2015
(Wall Street Journal) – Poor lifestyle choices and inherited genes are known to raise a person’s risk of developing cancer. But new research concludes that the majority of our risk across cancer types is due to another factor: bad luck when our cells divide. The analysis, published in the journal Science, says genetic mutations that randomly crop up as our stem cells divide are “the major contributors to cancer overall, often more important than either hereditary or external environmental factors.”