Colorectal Cancer Trends in Young Adults

Kennedy Jr

resumes. And let's take it straight to our

audience.

We have Love, he is a colorectal surgeon.

Thank you for taking my question. Uh, Secretary Kennedy,

as a colorectal surgeon,

I'm increasingly seeing impact of colorectal cancer in younger and younger

patients. We do screening, average risk screening, in patients, uh,

at

45 or above, but we still lack an effective way of

identifying

younger adults who may benefit from earlier screening.

What role should HHS play in funding research into risk

stratification tools and biomarkers to develop a targeted, uh,

screening

strategy for patients under 45?

Um,

we are right now... First of all, uh, yeah, thank you for your question,

and it's, uh, it's a really important one right now.

We're seeing an explosion in all cancers in young people,

and particularly soft tissue cancers.

But more than that, most alarming probably is this

giant increase in colorectal cancers, which, um,

were essentially, as you know, unknown in children

in previous generations. We're seeing them a lot, a lot now.

We are, um, in the process of,

um, of, uh, uh, developing very, very

rigid

screening recommendations for young people

with colorectal cancers. We're also looking at

causation. Uh, it, it clearly... This is

research that should've been done by NH, uh, 10 years

ago, 20 years ago. It's clearly related to

environmental changes, to some kind of an environmental

insult,

almost certainly from the food.

But also, it may be linked to pesticides in the

food.

Not only ultra-processed food, which is

obliterating our metabolic systems, but also

pesticides. And we're seeing some of the highest rates

in the

agricultural

states. Like, Iowa today has the fastest growing cancer

rate in the

world, the fastest growing cancer rate in the

history of the world.

Um, the second highest is Kentucky,

and it's in the agricultural center, um, parts of those

states where we're seeing it.

Uh, so there may be a, um, a pesticide link.

We are studying that now at the National Toxicity Program.