Cancer Incidence by Country

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence

by gniv • 2 years ago

54 94 2 years ago

umanwizard• 2 years ago

It’s not the only variable but this seems closely correlated with wealth/development. Perhaps cancer is less commonly diagnosed in poorer countries, and perhaps also people in them are more likely to die of something else before cancer gets them.

delichon• 2 years ago

"This has been age-standardized, assuming a constant age structure of the population for comparisons between countries and over time."

littlestymaar7• 2 years ago

That doesn't explain the massive discrepancy between the US and the rest of the Western world.

LunaSea• 2 years ago

Life expectancy is lower in the US.

About the same as Poland's.

namanyayg• 2 years ago

(Their data is from 2021)

It's strange to see US and Canada be so heavily skewed towards higher per capita rates.

nabla9• 2 years ago

Is it really?

Private healthcare incentive to provide a good health insurance and overtreatement for healthy and no insurance or treatment for sick.

That's shows as 3 year lower life expectancy compared to western Europe and Canada.

steelbrain• 2 years ago

The numbers in Poland seem pretty out of place. Does anyone know why?

walthamstow• 2 years ago

Coal pollution and processed pork consumption are possible causes. It's also newly developed, today's GDP per capita is not the same economy Poles have been living in most of their lives.

DangerousPie• 2 years ago

Keep in mind this is the incidence of cancer diagnoses. The quality of healthcare, diagnosis standards, and amount of preemptive screening varies heavily between countries.

FrustratedMonky2• 2 years ago

Yes. But I'd assume Europe would have at least equal diagnoses capability. So number of diagnoses should be similar.

So is US that much worse than Europe? Then we could start trying to pick apart differences, like diet, walking.

pantalaimon• 2 years ago

What’s interesting is that Poland appears to stand out in Europe

xbmcuser• 2 years ago

even Canada is half as much as USA but as it is still high compared to other so is dark blue

dauertewigkeit• 2 years ago

Even in pretty terrible healthcare systems, I would expect that close to 99% of people dying from cancer will actually be diagnosed with cancer, even if done too late.

rich_sasha4• 2 years ago

Perhaps in poor healthcare locales the death certificate just says "dead". Some people might not see a doctor at any stage of the disease.

defrost2• 2 years ago

The lowest rates are in central Africa, places where Cold War uranium was sourced from mines worked by humans with no real protection, etc.

Are the low rates due to healthy living, poor diagnostics, or dying of [other] before the cancer scores a mortality?

roenxi2• 2 years ago

This data doesn't seem to have much to do with deaths though, unless there is something on the page I'm missing?

dinobones• 2 years ago

To control for this I personally like comparing Murica North vs Murica South. (USA vs AUS).

3,304 vs 750

condiment• 2 years ago

It would be useful if the data differentiated by type of cancer. For instance, skin cancer diagnosis is straightforward and inexpensive. Visual identification and a biopsy, led by the patient noticing a difference. Contrast that with pancreatic cancer, which requires imaging for diagnosis.

As it is the only meaningful conclusion to draw from this data is that we need more data.

Aeolun• 2 years ago

Japan has a fuckton of that (yearly mandatory medical checks) but I don’t see their numbers being crazily inflated.

a_bonobo• 2 years ago

Japan, having ~the highest average age, should be on the top of the list but is not: second-highest bin. Australia is the skin cancer capital of the world ('Approximately 2 in 3 Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70'), yet is in the third-highest bin. Isn't that interesting!

gniv5• 2 years ago

That's why I chose mostly developed countries when I posted.

Edit: I just realized that the link was changed. What I had initially was this: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char...

netsharc• 2 years ago

The 2020, 2021 dip looks fishy, I would hypothize this is related to the pandemic lockdowns and overburdened hospitals reducing the number of cancer diagnoses. But it's a hypothesis that would need to be confirmed with the relevant numbers.

dredmorbius5• 2 years ago

AFAIU HN's posting system strips URL parameters.

If they're significant to your post you can email the mods at hn@ycombinator.com to restore them.

You might also want to write a top-level comment clarifying what you find significant about the URL and/or specific query.

leemailll• 2 years ago

Why Poland is high?

Also I suspect most of the countries on the map with low rates are not low with cancer rates but worse public health system. So not very telling

rich_sasha4• 2 years ago

I can imagine countries with poor healthcare and low life expectancy genuinely have less cancer incidence, because people die before they reach prime cancer age.

Jensson• 2 years ago

People go to Poland to get cheap private healthcare, but normally that is for things like plastic surgery so not sure if it would affect it.

orbital-decay• 2 years ago

There's a timeline in that chart, and the rate for Poland suddenly goes up in 2008. That's clearly an artifact.

littlestymaar7• 2 years ago

Also I suspect most of the countries on the map with low rates are not low with cancer rates but worse public health system. So not very telling

For southern countries, obviously. But the discrepancy between Western Europe (+ Australia and New Zealand) and US+Canada is quite intriguing to say the least.

Ralfp• 2 years ago

We have high environmental pollution in both air and water. Also high rates of alcohol consumption and smoking. And poor food quality.

gniv5• 2 years ago

Good question about Poland. Would be interesting to see stats on various types of cancers there to get an idea why it's so high.

Edit: I found a paper: https://journals.viamedica.pl/nowotwory_journal_of_oncology/...

Reubend• 2 years ago

This seems to indicate that the USA has vastly more cancer diagnoses than European countries even after adjusting for age.

Is there already research that explains why? Is this a well known phenomenon?

Simon_ORourke• 2 years ago

I'd speculate that a lot of this is down to the kind of diagnostic tests run on the typical patient coming in for treatment. I know from personal experience that in Europe it's a lot less and tends to be a "take an advil, go home and rest" while on my last trip to hospital for broken toe I got every blood test possible done too.

As a doctor friend of mine says, if you apply enough analysis you'll find something wrong somewhere. I think this might be the case in the US and Canada.

reducesuffering5• 2 years ago

I don’t think that’s the main culprit. US has higher incomes than most Euro countries but generally 5 years less of life expectancy. I think there’s at least one major environmental culprit that Americans will eventually be incensed at, like the Sackler situation but much worse.

marginalia_nu2• 2 years ago

I'd get this if we were talking about say influenza incidence rates, or cancer survival rates, but not cancer incidence rates.

Given the progressive and terminal nature of cancer, there comes a point where any relatively modern healthcare system will be forced to diagnose it.

That said, non-malignant tumors and other "could be cancer if you squint a bit" like states are relatively common in perfectly healthy people. If you go looking for them on a shoot first and ask questions later, you might very well inflate incidence rates quite significantly. The economic incentives at least in the US healthcare system seems to strongly favor discovering new diagnoses, whether or not they are actually there.

gniv5• 2 years ago

That was my question too when I saw the graph, and is the reason I posted it here.

singularity2001• 2 years ago

Highly processed food, "safe until proven toxic" principal, Monsanto lobby?

swed420• 2 years ago

This spells out the difference pretty clearly

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/pesticide-cancer-lobbying-lawsui...

rich_sasha4• 2 years ago

I see in Europe Poland is a massive outlier, even compared to much poorer per capita neighbours such as Ukraine or Belarus.

I wonder if (a) it's genuine, (b) if it, is it because some other crucial variables are different (society age, other causes if mortality etc) and finally (c) if it's not a statistical artifact, then why is there more cancer in Poland.

One reason that comes to mind is that Poland very much has a culture of going to see a doctor and getting examined for every little thing. UK for example has an ethos of "take some paracetamol and get on with it". But no idea if that's the actual cause.

arghwhat• 2 years ago

I imagine PM2.5 would be a significant cancer contributor in the area.

Poland has somewhere between the worst and second worst air pollution in europe. They are primarily coal-powered (~70% of energy production) and have had issues with private individuals burning trash.

Poland contributes about 8% of the PM2.5 pollution in Denmark despite the wind not being direct - Germany contributing 22% due to a more “favorable” wind, and Denmark itself contributing 20%.

wzdd• 2 years ago

I had a quick look but didn't find a reference to how much each country tests, what exactly they test for, and what constitutes a definition of "cancer" per-country (for example, do countries both classify and report non-malignant neoplasms the same way). Without this info I don't think it's possible to draw any conclusions, except between countries with (presumably) fairly similar reporting and testing regimes thanks to a long shared history, such as the UK and Australia.

littlestymaar7• 2 years ago

fairly similar reporting and testing regimes thanks to a long shared history, such as the UK and Australia.

Why would this result in such a difference with Canada then?

roenxi2• 2 years ago

The US is such an outrageous outlier that it does seem suspicious. Stereotyping the US health system, my first bet would be that doctors in the US can charge patients slightly more if they identify a cancer.

reducesuffering5• 2 years ago

The chart here indicates the US is practically the only country with high and still increasing rates.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char...

miniupuchaty• 2 years ago

Not if you add Poland to the graph.

Really surprised by this as a Pole.

blueCat34• 2 years ago

It's curious to see how, in the face of a higher rate of cancer, many people think that more tests are done in the US and Canada. What about the causes of cancer? Diet, sedentary lifestyle, expensive health system...

oglop• 2 years ago

This is hacker news, why would people make reasonable inferences? Better to either make it a class issue or better yet make a long winded post about the methodology and condescend everyone into nothing.

Obviously something is wrong, but you’re asking the population of people who for decades has said nothing is wrong. HN is extremely biased in this way. Never come here to learn. Its just to peak into the minds of the rich and autistic.

tiku• 2 years ago

Poland is an interesting case, why are they having much more cancer than the rest of Europe?

xanderlewis3• 2 years ago

Eating sausages?

Not trying to be offensive; I’m serious.

ahoka2• 2 years ago

I don’t think that’s unique to Poland.

tevlon• 2 years ago

Poland burns a lot of coal in the winter for heating, which results in poor air quality: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/1b5os4w/what_is...

gravelc• 2 years ago

Surprised Australia isn't much higher given the incidence of melanoma.

cqqxo4zV46cp• 2 years ago

She’ll be ‘right.

anonu• 2 years ago

The source data site has tons of great visuals and analysis: https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/gbd

The link provided by OP lacks context IMO.

bofadeez• 2 years ago

Seems like there's absolutely nothing UNIQUELY in common amongst countries with high incidence rates as compared to those with low incidence rates. AI agrees.

wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB• 2 years ago

North America have at least lowest mortality rate https://gco.iarc.who.int/today/en/dataviz/bars?types=0_1&mod...

stevev• 2 years ago

Fast foods and a laxed FDA. - US

konschubert2• 2 years ago

Is this controlling for the distribution of the population age?

You should probably computed the incidence, give a persons age in each country. Then, you can take any age distribution, re-weight the incidence in each country with that, and you will get an informative metric.

yaantc• 2 years ago

See just above the map: "This has been age-standardized, assuming a constant age structure of the population for comparisons between countries and over time.". This is what you suggests IIUC?

konschubert2• 2 years ago

Yes and i apologise for not seeing this.

pembrook2• 2 years ago

I’m certain most people will draw the wrong conclusions from this and use it as evidence of [insert trendy boogieman]. Eg. processed food! Microplastics! Smartphones! Etc!

But this says more about the economic status and healthcare systems of each of these countries than it does anything about actual human cancer rates in said countries.

For example, in the US, the forms of cancer with the highest growing incidence rates (on a population basis) are the hardest to detect and least deadly —- like thyroid cancer, melanoma, etc —- due to advancements in diagnostics. In the past (and in poorer countries today), these things still go unnoticed.

oliwarner2• 2 years ago

But often not undiagnosed. Many countries in the EU investigate otherwise-unexplained deaths and if they find cancer, it's listed on the death certificate. The data here appears to include that.

So unless there's a problem with over-diagnosis in North America, the EU would appear to have a lower incidence rate.

I agree, the difference is stark and suspicious but we should be a bit more thorough before ignoring data like this. There must be other US vs ... studies out there, right?

pembrook2• 2 years ago

This doesn’t explain Germany though, it has similar rates to the US.

If the EU were so much healthier, why would this be the case?

dredmorbius5• 2 years ago

Source data comes from IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2024), "with major processing by Our World in Data".

The upstream source is here, though I'll note that the most recent report is for 2021, though published in 2024: <https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/gbd>

Direct PDF link: <https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/2024-05/GBD_2...> (PDF) (24pp.)

Global cancer trends: <https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/cancer>

Lung, colorectal, stomach, and breast lead.

voytec• 2 years ago

As someone born and living in Poland, I'm not surprised by high cancer rates. But cancer is still peanuts in comparison to hypertension death rate.

"Polish diet" is basically growth hormone-boosted pork meat, potatoes and some beets or sauerkraut on the side, followed by sugar and flavoring diluted in saturated fat as a dessert. Sweets sold in our stores have different ingredients than the same brands sold in Germany, Austria or Sweden. We breathe coal smoke all winter (I literally moved to seaside for better air; ~35 AQI at the time of writing this) to heat ourselves and export electricity to Germany.

We eat shitton of salt because apart from coal mines, we also have salt mines and government propaganda is that MSG is unhealthy. You can see products marketed as "ZERO GLUTAMATES" on store shelves, and a quick look at nutrients table, shows tons of sodium. Most restaurants oversalt to get you to buy more drinks. To add, Polish people smoke cheap cigatrettes like chimneys. I remember ashtrays even on pharmacies' counters in the 80s - it was unthinkable to extinguish your lit tabacco when entering the pharmacy.

That said, we still have much lower (lower==better) Air Quality Index, usually tens to hundreds times lower than India, and Indian food isn't healthy, too. I'm not sure if the data coming from particular countries is reliable.

Cancer Incidence by Country

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