Why is cancer of the elderly more benign than is cancer that occurs at younger ages?
“The wisdom of the aged body” – Zajicek, in a stimulating editoriaI in the journal (1), suggested that the fact that cancer is more frequent in the elderly could be explained if cancers in older patients were generally relatively slow growing. He pointed out that, although it is counter-intuitive to suggest that the more prevalent cancers would be slower growing, slower growth in the elderly would explain why the elderly have more tumors – there would simply be more opportunity for slow growing tumors to be present per given unit of time if they were slower growing. This hypothesis was offered as an alternative to the more usual explanation that mutations probably accumulate with time and that this accumulation accounts for the high tumor incidence in old age, but it seems evident that the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Zajicek further suggested that, in accord with his hypothesis, there must be better mechanisms in the elderly to slow tumor growth -“the wisdom of the aged
