CALCULATING RISKS of Diseases and conditions
First, it became evident not only that people vary in susceptibility to disease but that increased risk depends upon many factors and that it is possible to calculate risks. Breast cancer, for example, occurs in 5 percent of white women over black in the United States-and so, on the average, there is a 1 in 20 But a woman with a positive family history of breast cancer-one mother or sister or aunt developed the disease-has triple the risk on her women. (Let us say, at once, that if this increased hazard be- of hereditary influences stood by itself it' would be only a more But it stands with increasingly sensitive and detecting her at earlier and earlier-and therefore more curable-stages, and scores the wisdom of special emphasis on breast cancer detection such a woman.
Other factors, racial and social, help to identify special proneness’s.
Japanese have a high risk of stomach cancer but relatively low risk breast cancer; the Chinese and Malaysians have a high risk of nose throat cancer. In unskilled American workers and their wives, the
incidence of cancer of the stomach and uterine cervix is three to four
times higher than among people in the professional fields. On the other
hand cancer of the breast and leukemia are substantially more common in the higher economic classes.
there are occupational factors to be considered.
For example, urinary bladder cancer has an increased incidence among dye workers, in that industry programs have annual tests of urine. Medicine also has been establishing other characteristics associated with high risk of specific diseases as a means of permitting preventive medical care to be used. For coronary heart disease, which may lead to the heart attack, the characteristics include excessive levels of certain fats II the blood, high blood pressure, high pulse rate, cigarette smoking, physlcal inactivity, and premature cessation of ovarian activity in a woman. The incidence of the disease, in men aged 40 to 59 for example, (from 9 per 1,000 when one of these factors is present to 77 per 1,000 when any three of them are present.
First, it became evident not only that people vary in susceptibility to disease but that increased risk depends upon many factors and that it is possible to calculate risks. Breast cancer, for example, occurs in 5 percent of white women over black in the United States-and so, on the average, there is a 1 in 20 But a woman with a positive family history of breast cancer-one mother or sister or aunt developed the disease-has triple the risk on her women. (Let us say, at once, that if this increased hazard be- of hereditary influences stood by itself it' would be only a more But it stands with increasingly sensitive and detecting her at earlier and earlier-and therefore more curable-stages, and scores the wisdom of special emphasis on breast cancer detection such a woman.
For example, urinary bladder cancer has an increased incidence among dye workers, in that industry programs have annual tests of urine. Medicine also has been establishing other characteristics associated with high risk of specific diseases as a means of permitting preventive medical care to be used. For coronary heart disease, which may lead to the heart attack, the characteristics include excessive levels of certain fats II the blood, high blood pressure, high pulse rate, cigarette smoking, physlcal inactivity, and premature cessation of ovarian activity in a woman. The incidence of the disease, in men aged 40 to 59 for example, (from 9 per 1,000 when one of these factors is present to 77 per 1,000 when any three of them are present.
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