It's also that we now live much longer, so things that didn't have time to accumulate in our organs before we died two hundred years ago now have time to be noticeable threats to our longevity.<br/><br/>When you expect to die at fifty or sixty, cancer isn't any more likely than myriad other things and may not even be recognizable. When you expect to die at seventy or eighty or ninety...Suddenly you've survived a lot of that other stuff.<br/><br/>Interestingly, my doctor told me that there's a bunch of stuff that hits in the eighties, and that if you make it to ninety your odds are extremely good of seeing one hundred, because you have survived most of the major points when you experience organ shutdowns and other issues.