Explaining cancer risk in a statistical sense It is a human trait to search for explanations for catastrophic events and rule out mere “chance” or “bad luck.” When it comes to human cancer, the issue of natural causes versus bad luck was raised by Tomasetti and Vogelstein about 2 years ago (1). Their study, which was widely misinterpreted as saying that most cancers are due neither to genetic inheritance nor environmental factors but simply bad luck, sparked controversy. To date, a few hundred papers have been written in response, including (2–6), with some [e.g., (2)] coming to opposite conclusions. What is this controversy about? Tomasetti and Vogelstein concluded that 65% of the differences in the risk of certain cancers is linked to stem cell divisions in the various cancerous tissues examined (1). On page 1330 of this issue, Tomasetti et al. (7) provide further evidence that this is not specific to the United States.

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基因、环境和“厄运”

从统计意义上解释癌症风险 寻找灾难性事件的解释并排除纯粹的“机会”或“厄运”是人类的特征。当谈到人类癌症时，Tomasetti 和 Vogelstein 大约在 2 年前提出了自然原因与厄运的问题（1）。他们的研究被广泛误解为大多数癌症既不是基因遗传也不是环境因素，而只是运气不好，引发了争议。迄今为止，已有数百篇论文作出回应，包括 (2-6)，其中一些 [例如 (2)] 得出了相反的结论。这场争论是关于什么的？Tomasetti 和 Vogelstein 得出结论，某些癌症风险的 65% 差异与所检查的各种癌组织中的干细胞分裂有关 (1)。在本期第 1330 页上，Tomasetti 等人。