This mostly can't explain the fact that mortality is also rising in under 50s. It is true mortality is rising less than incident, and that a small proportion instances of mortality could be deaths related to reasonable risks taken on from treatment side effects (to make up numbers, it makes sense to take a 5% chance of dying from treatment this year over a 80% chance of dying from cancer in 5 years), but this is probably not the whole effect. Something is causing more CRC in people under 50.

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pfannkuchen an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Does treatment ever speed up death? Given that chemo is super hard on the body I imagine it could? That might just account for your use of “mostly”, though.

	▲	greedo 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It would depend on the treatment. In my case I had neoadjuvant radiation followed by chemo, then surgery, capped off with more chemo to kill any cancer cells that might have tried to make a dash for it. I would assume that while the radiation treatment elevated my risk for future cancers, the greater risk was my 10 hour surgical procedure.

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kazinator an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

No, it can't explain that; but the rise is very small. On the per 100,000 mortality graphs divided into the age cohorts, the under fifty mortality is almost a flat line. There is something there, but it doesn't seem like a huge alarm.