Was watching CBS news this morning and they had a five minute bit on the dramatic and alarming increase in the colon cancer rates of young people. This is based on some alarming study that found for adults 20 to 39 the rates have increased by 1-2%!
Five minutes went by, worried interviews with real life survivors who "didn't know it could happen," interviews with medical experts that were "alarmed" by the rate of increase, and even flashing of lists of symptoms (that other than rectal bleeding are incredibly common events).
But you know what WAS NOT covered? The actual incidence rate. You have to go find those yourself, seems like a critical piece of information for this massive health problem doesn't it?
So what are the rates, best I can determine, they are roughly between 9 and 10 in 100,000 people of 20-49, which is overinclusive of the group they are discussing, and disagnosis increases with age meaning this overstates the case. But even using those numbers it's less one in 10,000. To get to a 2% increase meaning "another" case, it would mean a difference between 45-50 out of 500,000 and 46-51 out of 500,000. There's about 80 million people in that age group in the US, so were talking about the "alarming" increase at worst being 160 cases a year.
This was presented to the 80 million in that age group as a panic type report.