In Australia today, one in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed with some type of cancer before the age of 85, and to add to our concern, the statistics used do not include the most common skin cancers, such as basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, for which it is estimated that thousands of Australians are treated each year. The increasing number of new cancer patients over the past three decades – in Australia, there were 47,445 new cancer patients per year in 1982, but this number rose to 122,093 in 2012 – invariably leads some people to examine why the risk of cancer is so high for individuals in contemporary society and the number of cancer patients is so high. Of course the increase in population may partially explain why the number of patients with cancer has increased, but other major factors are the ability of modern medicine to significantly extend the human lifespan as we pass through disease and live long enough to die from cancer. I. Cancer risk increases with age A closer look at the relationship between cancer incidence figures and the age of patients diagnosed shows that as the age of the organism increases, so does the incidence of cancer in the population. For children and adults under the age of forty, the incidence of cancer is quite low, but after the age of forty, the incidence of cancer increases significantly with age (figure below). Compared to those under the age of 60, the incidence of cancer in people over the age of 60 is about 10 times higher than the former. II. Cancer: a disease occurring in the genes of the body Therefore, why does the incidence of cancer increase significantly as the age of the body increases? Cancer is a disease caused by errors in the body’s genes, which are the DNA code in our cells and provide the “blueprint” for all cellular functions, and these genetic errors can occur for a number of reasons. Chemical carcinogens and radiation are two of the main triggers and play an important role in the development of certain cancers, from lung cancer caused by chemical carcinogens in cigarettes to melanoma caused by ultraviolet radiation. Certain genetic errors are induced in our organism, for example, the inappropriate BRCA gene can be inherited in certain families and lead to a series of cancers, such as breast and ovarian cancers, and certain viruses can also cause zygote, for example, human papilloma virus (HPV) is directly related to the development of cervical cancer. Yet another major cause of genetic errors is that they arise from the normal biological process of the body, which is composed of trillions of cells, and in many cases these single cells have a definite life span; when these cells die, they are replaced by new cells, and the creation of new cells is attributed to the division of another cell in two, in which the DNA in the cell needs to be Although the process of DNA replication is highly controlled and accurate, it will be replicated approximately one trillion times during a human lifetime, which means that errors in the DNA of some cells will inevitably occur during the replication process. Therefore, there are some “errors” in the genes of our cells, most of which have no effect or only add to the specificity of the organism alone, e.g., an error in the MC1R gene will occasionally give an individual red hair; but a specific error in a particular gene will, by promoting excessive cellular activity, cause the cell to have red hair. However, specific errors in certain genes can be a potential mechanism for cancer development by promoting cells that are overactive and cannot be suppressed by the body. Human cells are well controlled because they have many safe mechanisms, which means that a single “cancer-promoting” error in a cell’s DNA code does not cause cancer, but rather, many different “cancer-promoting” errors are required in genes that control specific cell types, such as cell division, cell division, and cell death. Instead, many different “oncogenic” errors are required in genes that control specific cell types, such as cell division, programmed cell death, and cell motility. It has been suggested that the number of different “cancer-promoting” genetic errors required in a single cell should be at least six, and for many cancers to develop, many more genetic errors are often required, and only when all errors are present in the same cell will the cell have a chance to develop cancer. It often takes a long time to accumulate the right types of errors to drive the transformation of normal cells into cancer cells, so the longer we survive, the longer the errors will accumulate in the genes of the body’s cells. At present, researchers do not have many strategies to inhibit the aging of the body, but we can reduce the risk of cancer by some external factors, such as avoiding exposure to chemical carcinogens (cigarettes), reducing exposure to ultraviolet light (UV), and also some vaccinations in real time to prevent viral infections, such as HPV.