CANCER AS A SPECIAL CASE OF A GENERAL 

 DEGENERATIVE PROCESS* 



Harry Auerbach 



Division of Biological and Medical Research, 

 Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois 



Abstract — Death rates or life table q^^ values for populations throughout the world tend to 

 exhibit a sixth power linear relationship with age when plotted on a log-log basis. 



It is shown that the total deaths can be broadly separated into chronic degenerative causes 

 and acute causes, with death from the degenerative causes increasing as the sixth power of 

 age and death from the acute causes increasing in simple exponential fashion. 



In many cancer studies at this laboratory and elsewhere, attempts have been 

 made to discover the underlying mechanism by which tumors come into exis- 

 tence. While a great many of these studies have been directed toward describing 

 the process of carcinogenesis in biological terms, the statistical approach 

 has also been productive. A recent study at Argonne National Laboratory, 

 using analysis of vital statistics, indicates that cancer has some characteristics 

 in common with the degenerative diseases. 



The study was suggested by observations of others (1, 2, 3) that when the 

 logarithm of death rate from cancer (either the total or that involving a specific 

 site) was plotted against the logarithm of age at death, the result was usually 

 a straight line. The slope of the line indicated a sixth power relationship, 

 a fact that has been used to support several theories of carcinogenesis. Another 

 interesting possibility — that the same linear relationship might be present 

 in other causes of death — was recognized and investigated in the present study. 



The question was first examined by analyzing the United States death rates 

 for the years 1949-1951. Plots were made on the same log-log basis for several 

 broad groups of causes of death. Five groups (circulatory system, mahgnant 

 neoplasms, nervous system and sense organs, respiratory system, and genito- 

 urinary system) showed a relationship of approximately the sixth power of age 

 to a marked degree for age thirty and older, with departures from linearity 

 being restricted to ages under thirty. The sum of these groups gave an almost 

 perfect linear relationship from the age of thirty upwards (Fig. 1). These 

 five groups represent the overwhelming majority of the chronic degenerative 

 causes of death. The remaining three (infective and parasitic diseases, digestive 

 system, and accidents) which did not show the linear relationship, represent 

 the acute causes of death. 



In order to find out whether the same situation obtained in other countries, 

 a slightly different method had to be used. Life table data, which are available 

 for most of the countries of the world, were used in the absence of reliable 

 specific cause death rate statistics. The value used was q^, the proportion of 



* Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. 



347 



