Title: Why are cancer rates increasing? - Cancer Research UK - Cancer news
Headings: Why are cancer rates increasing?
Why are cancer rates increasing?
What’s the cancer rate in the UK?
Why cancer rates are rising
Specific cancers, specific reasons
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Cancer survival is increasing too
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Content: More than three-quarters of all people diagnosed with cancer in the UK are 60 and over. And this is because cancer is a disease of our genes – the bits of DNA code that hold the instructions for all of the microscopic machinery inside our cells. Over time, mistakes accumulate in this code – scientists can now see them stamped in cancer’s DNA. And it’s these mistakes that can kick start a cell’s journey towards becoming cancerous. The longer we live, the more time we have for errors to build up. And so, as time passes, our risk of developing cancer goes up, as we accumulate more of these faults in our genes. In the graph below, you can see how UK life expectancy has increased over time and the number of people living into old age is higher than ever before. This means there are now more people than ever living to an age where they have a higher risk of developing cancer. Copy this link and share our graphic. Credit: