Dr. Harvey Risch: Rise in Aggressive 'Turbo Cancers' - And Especially Among Younger People

American Thought Leaders

"What clinicians have been seeing," says Dr. Harvey Risch, "is very strange things: For example, 25-year-olds with colon cancer, who don't have family histories of the disease—that's basically impossible along the known paradigm for how colon cancer works—and other long-latency cancers that they're seeing in very young people."

Dr. Risch is Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His research has focused extensively on the causes of cancer as well as prevention and early diagnosis.

We discuss the rise of what are called "turbo cancers" and what may be causing them.

"Some of these cancers are so aggressive that between the time that they're first seen and when they come back for treatment after a few weeks, they've grown dramatically compared to what oncologists would have expected for the way cancer normally progresses," Dr. Risch says.