World-leading skin cancer researcher, joint Australian of the Year for 2024 and, according to him, ‘everyday Aussie’, Professor Richard Scolyer, died this month following an heroic battle with a rare brain cancer. He was just 59 and his death spurred me to check the latest cancer trends. What I found was unsettling data for our kids and grandkids – but good news for all ages about practical prevention.
Main Points
- Scolyer’s cancer was a rare brain cancer called ‘glioblastoma’;
- The cancers in young people which are increasing are not rare or in the brain;
- Research from Australia, the UK, the US and globally all found the same trends;
- Genes are involved in cancer but not as we traditionally thought;
- There are practical cancer prevention steps we can take at any age.
A Humble Aussie Hero
Before we move on to why there’s more cancer in young people, I’d like to add to the many accolades for Scolyer’s exceptional contribution.
Apart from his role in developing an innovative melanoma protocol – using immunotherapy drugs in combination and before surgery (not after, as is usual) – he became a cancer sufferer himself.
Who wouldn’t be inspired by his humility and optimism in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis?
Courage too. He volunteered to be the human guinea pig, ‘patient zero’ he said, testing the same novel melanoma protocol on his rare type of brain cancer. That’s like volunteering for Russian Roulette. Highly unpredictable and dangerous.
Few people would have had that opportunity and fewer would have taken it, I imagine, but his decision bought him three more precious years with his family. It also gave the world a rare data set that a clinical trial may never replicate.
Extraordinary when you think of it. Richard Scolyer set a wonderful example for young and old.
Perhaps the greatest lesson to come from these last three years is that cancer does not define us. It may be the current road we are travelling but it is not our entire journey.
So, Why Is There More Cancer In Young People?
Scolyer’s cancer death at just 59 made me wonder about recent trends. I didn’t expect that cancer in younger people would be so prominent.
But, let’s first answer the question: is there in fact more cancer in younger people?
Cancer Australia (as reported by the ABC) has this confronting table which answers the question in the affirmative, for Aussies aged 30-39 years. It’s concerning because, for decades, the mantra has been ‘cancer rates are going up because we’re living longer, giving cancers more time to develop’.
These data suggest that this may no longer be the case.
These numbers are pretty hard to ignore, but need some context to gauge their significance. For instance:
- How big are the baselines from which these increases are calculated?
- Are these cancers also increasing in older people?
- These are just diagnoses; what about mortality rates?
- Is this just an Aussie aberration? What’s happening elsewhere?
What Are The Baselines For Cancers In Younger People?
AIHW (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, the official source of government health figures) offers an eye-watering amount of detail. You have to dig below the headline figures to glean the significance. There, AIHW calls out increases in colorectal (bowel) cancer and thyroid cancer in people aged 30-39 and thyroid, breast, prostate, colorectal, and kidney cancer in people aged 40-49. (Blue highlights added by me).
As you can see, comparing these two age groups, the incidence of most cancers does increase with age, but the increases in those specific cancers and ages stand out like sore thumbs.
In other words, while the baselines for those specific cancers are lower in younger people, the increases are much higher, and that is significant.
Norman Swan, that familiar doctor on Aussie TV, says the rates of cancer in the young are cause for concern. He says: ‘If researchers are right, the rise in younger adults will get worse as it’s compounded by the effects of aging.’ In other words, if the rates of these cancers are high when people are young, they’ll be very much higher when they’re older.
One of the US’s leading cancer bio-statisticians, Philip Rosenberg, is also concerned about these trends which he labels ‘astonishing’. He says: ‘If things stay on their current trajectories, then we can expect that they would continue to experience those proportionate increases as they get older’ – and that cancer rates for people born in the 70s could be double those born in the 50s.
Many researchers are concerned about colorectal cancer in the young, not just because of the increases, but the size of the numbers.
Associate Professor Daniel Buchanan from Uni of Melbourne’s Colorectal Oncogenomics Lab says: ‘Compared to people born in the 1960s, people born in the early 2000s have a six-to-seven-fold increased likelihood of getting colorectal cancer, which is huge.’
Compared to people born in the 1960s, people born in the early 2000s have a six-to-seven-fold increased likelihood of getting colorectal cancer (bowel cancer), which is huge.
Daniel Buchanan, Colorectal Oncogenomics Lab, University of Melbourne
Which Cancer Figures Actually Matter?
Something to note here is the difference between incidence and mortality.
The incidence rate is how many cancers are being detected – the two tables above and the one immediately below. The mortality rate is how deadly they are – the graph below the next paragraph.
Australia has the highest incidence in the world for all cancers – 462.5 per 100,000 people – but is at position 47 when it comes to cancer death rates. In other words, we’re detecting a pile of cancers Down Under, but treating many of them successfully, when all ages and all cancers are lumped together. (ASR is the Age Standardised Incidence Rate, which is the most accurate.)
Also, Australia has the highest cancer survival rate (survival for 5 years) in the world for all cancers combined. The figure is about 72% for both genders, AIHW tell us, which is something to be proud of. The problem is, some of the cancers increasing in younger people are not the ones with the highest survival rates.
What About Cancer Deaths In Younger People?
AIHW offers a mine shaft of information; the more you dig, the more layers and sub-layers you find. That’s why I dug into mortality rates for just colorectal cancer. That is, deaths from this cancer over time for people aged 30-44 years. (For some odd reason, an exact overlay for ages 30-39 years was not an option.)
You can see why researchers are concerned about this cancer in younger people: we’re detecting more of it and more young people are dying from it.
What About Data Outside Australia?
A recent 2026 study in the UK had similar results. It showed that, as well as bowel (colorectal) cancer, thyroid, multiple myeloma, liver, kidney, gallbladder, pancreatic, womb lining (or endometrial), mouth, breast and ovarian cancers were increasing in people aged 20 to 40 years.
- Bowel and breast cancers were the most common in younger adults.
- Bowel and ovarian cancers were increasing exclusively in the young.
In the US, Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Centre (MSK), one of the world’s leading cancer authorities, found similar results: more young people were being diagnosed with more serious cancers, including colorectal, breast, prostate, uterine, stomach (gastric) and pancreatic cancer.
Another recent study, published in 2025, was a global one – cancer incidence and mortality over five continents and 17 years between 2000 and 2017 probing World Health Organisation databases. (I’m glad I didn’t have to dig into those enormous databases.) The continents analysed were Asia, North America, Central & South America, Europe and Oceania (the last one included data from Australia and New Zealand only).
The study found that 13 cancers were increasing in people aged under age 50, and six of them — colorectal, cervical, pancreatic, prostate, kidney and multiple myeloma — were rising faster in this age group than in older people, in three continents – North America, Europe and Oceania.
…by 2030, colorectal cancer incidence in those ages 20 to 34 will rise by 90 percent, and, in those ages 35 to 49, by 46 percent.
Colorectal cancer was a standout in this study too. The individual counties highlighted were Australia, the UK, Canada and the USA. Hardly the poorest countries with the worst water quality, air quality or standards of living.
But Isn’t Cancer In Our genes?
Maybe not as we think.
Years ago, we believed that getting cancer was ‘in our genes’. It was programmed in; nothing we could do. These days, we know that genetics accounts for less than 10% of cancer cases and, those other popular culprits, cancer viruses, account for less than 20%. That leaves a big number – 70% of cancers across all age groups – with other causes.
It turns out that genes are involved, but not as we used to think.
Back in 1942, embryologist Conrad Waddington coined the term ‘epigenetics’ to describe how changes in our cells occur without changes in our genes. In other words, our genes are influenced by other things, not just what’s in their ‘genetic code’. These influences continue throughout our lives.
These three concepts explain what epigenetics is and why, these days, researchers are looking beyond genes and viruses to explain cancer incidence in the young – and old:
- Epigenetics is nurture not just nature. That’s why two genetically identical twins can have very different profiles if they live differently. For instance, one is obese, unfit and smokes while the other is an elite athlete.
- Epigenetics is reversible. Just as giving up smoking encourages repair of the lungs, removing other harmful influences can do the same for other organs;
- Epigenetics is everywhere. What we eat, where we live, who we interact with, when we sleep, how we exercise and much more can chemically modify our genes, turning them on or off.
What you eat, where you live, who you interact with, when you sleep, how you exercise and much more can chemically modify your genes, turning them on or off.
Another way to put this is ‘genes load the gun and epigenetics pulls the trigger’ as this explanation shows.
Why Are These Cancers Going Up In These Countries?
With these concepts in mind, the links between high rates of certain cancers in younger people in advanced Western countries become easier to understand. Here is a summary of a some research:
- Consumption of the Western Diet of high-carb, highly-processed-food (UPFs) is mirrored by increases in obesity in the same Western countries. The UK study, the global study and MSK (mentioned above) all mention the correlation of obesity with higher cancer rates in younger people;
- Unbalanced gut microbiomes. The Western Diet has limited diversity, actively discouraging good gut bugs and supporting harmful ones that promote inflammation, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cancer. In other words, this much-consumed diet in Western countries doesn’t just put on weight; it can predispose to cancer;
- Harmful food additives. From hormones fed to farmed salmon, poultry and livestock to carcinogens in food flavours, colours, texturisiers and processes, the modern food chain is laden with substances that can trigger or predispose to cancer. In other words, the Western Diet isn’t the only challenge;
- Antibiotics also affect the gut but sharply, over a short period. One course of antibiotics can wipe out our gut microbiomes for six months and some beneficial bugs may never return. These days, overuse of antibiotics is widespread as is resistance to them. As a result, wider-spectrum antibiotics are used which wipe out even more gut microbes;
- Plastics. Combining nano- or micro-plastics ingested in food or applied to the body, and chemicals like PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) in vessels that contain or cook food, there are 16,000 different chemicals used in plastics, these days. Only one third have been analysed and 75% of those were found to be harmful;
- Air pollution. Inhalable particles of 2.5 microns or less from vehicle exhaust, power plants, wildfires, and industrial emissions, are linked to higher cancer risk overall, and higher mortality rates for breast, liver and lung cancers;
- Artificial light and poor sleep. Prolonged exposure to artificial light, especially at night, is linked to higher cancer risk and to disrupted, short duration or poor quality sleep which amplifies the impact.
This list isn’t exhaustive but hints at the size of the epigenetics problem faced by younger people: they’ve been exposed to a lot more harmful stuff than we boomers ever were – and that exposure may have started before birth.
This is not a blip. The more data we gather, the clearer this becomes.
Andrea Cercek, Director, The Center for Young Onset Colorectal and Gastrointestinal Cancer
That’s why so many researchers are concerned about younger-age cancer, with one forecasting that cancer in people aged under 50 will increase by 30% globally from 2019 to 2030.
“This is serious and worrisome,” says Shari Goldfarb, MD, breast oncologist and Director of MSK’s Young Women With Breast Cancer program.
“This is not a blip,” explains Andrea Cercek, MD, gastrointestinal oncologist and Co-Director of The Center for Young Onset Colorectal and Gastrointestinal Cancer. “The more data we gather, the clearer this becomes.”
How About the Good Cancer News?
Behind all this concerning data for younger people is better news for them and for us oldies, too.
It’s our new friend epigenetics: the things we can do to change how our genes work. It’s as much a problem as a solution and it isn’t new. As we saw, we’ve known that gene expression can be influenced by external factors, since 1942.
What’s changed in the last 20 years is the growing acceptance of this idea in relation to cancer:
- Back in 2011, Queen Mary University of London listed 14 lifestyle factors it said cause 40% of cancers;
- In 2014, the American Cancer Society study identified 18 preventable risk factors that it said caused 40% of cancers;
- In 2016, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health said up to 70% of cancers could be prevented by four broad lifestyle changes;
- In 2026, the US National Cancer Institute dumbs it down a bit to these three: maintaining a healthy lifestyle, avoiding exposure to known cancer-causing substances, and taking medicines or vaccines to prevent cancer from developing.
These days, institutes like the Mayo Clinic, the American Cancer Society, Stanford Health and the Australian Cancer Council also recognise the powerful impact of lifestyle factors on cancer.
…these (cancer prevention) figures increased to 40% to 70% when assessed with regard to the broader US population of whites, which has a much worse lifestyle pattern than our cohorts.
T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University
Of course, that still leaves a lot of cancers that can’t be prevented. Scolyer’s rare glioblastoma may be one of them.
There are reams of research papers written on cancer causes and prevention. I know, I’ve trawled through many of them.
Some are impenetrably technical, others are sponsored by companies linked to solutions, still others are hopeful but vague, designed to make us feel less helpless and more hopeful – a bit like the NCI above.
Some of what I found was unsurprising, like healthier habits practised over a lifetime have more impact than guilty late conversions. Others were surprising, such as this: while cancers grow more slowly as we age, they’re more likely to be triggered when we’re older – but we can avoid those triggers. Also, when combined, many small changes make a big impact on our cancer risk – at any age. That is, there is no single magic bullet or magic timing for it.
What I found was too much to squeeze into a post like this, and simple lists like those above miss the practical detail. (I did try to summarise the research here, but quickly found it was Mission Impossible.)
If you’re intrigued by the many causes of cancer in people young and old – and how much you could do to avoid them at any age – you may like to check what’s inside my eBook, Cancer: Make Your Own Luck.
Whether you read further or not, and whether you’re concerned for your kids or for yourself, the good news is this: epigenetics is on our side.
We can do more to influence cancer than we ever thought, at any age, if we choose to.
CANCER: MAKE
YOUR OWN LUCK
How you can take control & cut the risk
