Cancer and "Bad Luck"

I commented yesterday on the brief Science piece by Vogelstein and colleagues. In the past twenty four hours I have seen over two dozen news pieces from every continent, except Antarctica, pitching the "bad luck" tale. Even China Daily had the story on its front page! This is unfortunately now a typical response, no analysis, just repetition. The "bad luck" was in the abstract and they could not have chose a better phrase to get picked up globally.

Now the results are not ground shaking and "bad luck" is not a scientific phrase. In reality the authors just observed that certain cancers are most likely driven by specific genetic changes already known or by such personal life choices like smoking. The rest are really unknown.

We are learning more and more of epigenetic effects, such as methylation, that result from inflammation, which may be a result of some life style choice such as obesity. That has not been factored in, especially since breast and prostate cancers were not considered.

Thus the term "bad luck" may just be a "bad choice" but it does get Press. But is that what science it meant to do?