Is this Normal

originally posted by: ketsuko
I'd say given the wide age range and differing types of cancer, it's more likely to be environmentally triggered if they all lived close together. There may be something in their make-up that makes them more vulnerable, but it's still more likely an environmental trigger.

Unless the exposure caused genetic mutations, environmental factors are triggering epigenetic mechanisms (which might be inherited). ....Epigenetic processes are adaptive - they override genetic programming to turn genes off and on, and modify already-produced gene products (proteins). ....Epigenetic processes respond immediately to environmental changes - they are inheritable but reversible, and tend to shift if the environment changes again or disappear if it returns to "normal."