Injury and insult
Is it possible for cancer to develop as a result of an injury?
“It’s a common myth that injuries can cause cancer,” the American Cancer Society informed on its Website. Until the 1920s, some doctors believed trauma did cause cancer, “despite the failure of injury to cause cancer in experimental animals.”
But most medical authorities, including the Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, see no such link.
The more likely explanation, the society suggests, is that a visit to the doctor for an injury could lead to finding an existing cancer.
Other possibilities are that scar tissue from an old trauma could look like a cancerous lesion and that an injured breast or limb would be more closely watched for cancer to develop.
A single interview-based study of breast cancer in England found that 67 women with breast carcinoma were more likely to report physical trauma to the breast in the preceding five years than 134 women in a matched control group without cancer. The study was criticized because of its size and methodology.
Published in 2002 in The European Journal of Cancer Prevention, the study has not been duplicated. Its authors suggested that it was plausible that models of epithelial cell generation could be a mechanism. But the case is far from proved, even for a single type of cancer.
Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted).
Based on the text above, judge the following items.
Based on the text above, judge the following items.
In the past some doctors believed that injuries caused cancer because this is what animal experiments indicated.