[croissants]

I was going to ask about this number, because it seems high enough to be statistically improbable, but back-of-the-envelope arithmetic says otherwise: there are about 10 cases of pancreatic cancer per 100,000 people per year [1], so let's say each person has a 1 in 10,000 chance of a diagnosis each year. If you know somebody for 50 years, there's a 1 in 200 chance they receive a diagnosis in that time, so you'd expect to need to know 2000 people to eventually know 10 diagnosed people. 2000 is a lot, but "knowing" a person is a pretty loose term, and pancreatic cancer has a miserably high death rate within 5 years, so it's unfortunately plausible.

[1] https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/pancreas.html

[steveBK123]

The number of people you know who have or die of cancer grows exponentially with age once you are an adult.

In 20s-early 30s, maybe 0 if your parents/uncles/aunts are lucky. You can be completely oblivious to it if your older relatives manage to escape it.

By 40 you start hearing about friends having it pretty routinely. We seem to have hit a one close friend per year pace at the moment.

Every time I talk to my 70+ parents, they are telling me about a funeral they've been to recently, often caused by either cancer or heart disease.

[s1artibartfast]

if you take the 1/200 chance over 50 years, here is the percent chance you know 10 diagnoses depending on your number of friends/acquaintances

50 people: 8.36149e-12 %

500 people: 0.026%

1000 people 3.1%

2000 people: 50%

[e40]

This is people I know or my family knows. My mother knows 4-5 people. I've had 2 coworkers die of it. I've had 1 in-law die of it. It's crazy how fast the numbers add up.

[Teever]

Keep in mind that there could be clusters of cases related to environmental contamination so it's very possible that some people know more people who get a particular form of cancer.