RFK Jr. pointed at the colon cancer figures in young adults this week, and within about four hours the response had arranged itself into the same two instructions we have been issued since 1982. Eat less red meat. Eat more fibre. Red meat has a scheduling problem. American beef consumption peaked in 1976 and has fallen by roughly a third since. The generation now being diagnosed at thirty-five ate less of it than any generation of the last century, while early-onset colorectal cancer doubled in two decades. A suspect who has been leaving town for fifty years, still in the dock, still not asked to explain himself. Fibre did worse. They ran it properly, twice, in two countries, thousands of people, years of wheat bran and extra fruit and veg, watching for polyps. The polyps came back at exactly the same rate as in the people eating none of it. Nobody withdrew the advice. Nobody ever does. Then last year a team sequenced 981 tumours from eleven countries. Certain E. coli strains make a toxin called colibactin, which snaps both strands of DNA and leaves a signature so distinctive you can read it off a tumour decades later. In patients diagnosed under forty it turns up 3.3 times more often than in patients over seventy. And they could date it. The mutations were laid down in the first ten years of life. So the damage that produces a tumour at thirty-five was done before that person was old enough to buy anything, choose anything or cook anything. Whatever they had for lunch last Tuesday is not in the frame and never was. Colibactin is also pathetically short lived. It only works on contact. The bacterium has to be physically pressed against the colon lining, and it cannot get there, because the inner mucus layer is a sterile exclusion zone that holds the entire microbiome at arm's length. Something has to take that barrier down. Carboxymethylcellulose. Polysorbate 80. Industrial detergents, filed under emulsifiers, because emulsifier sounds like something a chef does. They are in the ice cream, the bread, the sauces, the protein bars and most of what gets handed to a child. Feed carboxymethylcellulose to healthy adults under supervision and you can watch their bacteria move in and take up residence against the wall. The toxin is thousands of years old. The barrier it has to get through is the thing that changed, it is on the label, and everybody in this argument is busy discussing a steak.
https://x.com/SamaHoole/status/2093752644107956288?s=20
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