Hearing “you have cancer” from your doctor is something no one wants to experience at any point in life. But shockingly, half of all adults will get a cancer diagnosis, according to a new study from the British Journal of Cancer, which predicts that one out of every two U.K. adults born in 1960 will develop the disease during their lifetime.
Broken down by gender, the numbers slightly favor women, but only because more men smoke: Men born in 1960 have a lifetime cancer risk of 53.5 percent, while the risk is 47.5 percent for women. The study forecasts a rise in cancer rates; by contrast, only one in three U.K. residents born in 1930 were projected to get cancer.
It’s scary news, but do the numbers translate across the pond here in America? They line up pretty closely, says Len Lichtenfeld, M.D., deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, with one in two men and one in three women in the U.S. expected to be diagnosed with the big C.
