The Curse of the Mummy
A professor at the American University in Cairo discovered prostate cancer—in a 2,200 year old mummy! Yes you read that correctly, you are not hallucinating, and if you can believe it, try this one on for size—this was the second oldest known case of prostate cancer! The oldest known case was discovered in Russia within a Scythian king`s skeleton that was 2,700 years old.
What makes this case interesting is that testing point s to the fact that the disease was not caused by the environment that this man lived in, but rather by genetics. This genetics v environment question could very well hold the key to understanding how cancer functions and why. Professor Salima Ikram an AUV professor who worked on the mummy for 2 years in Portugal said of the mummy of the man who died in his forties in a statement yesterday that ``Living conditions in ancient times were very different; there were no pollutants or modified foods, which leads us to believe that the disease is not necessarily only linked to industrial factors.``
