>>14159826Your cells know how to develop, grow and do their job thanks to the information stored in your DNA (of which each cell (although not every cell) has a copy).
Passing this on to new cells can be thought of as a game of Chinese whispers. If the message is disturbed, the meaning of the whole message can be changed (e.g. RAT could become HAT). The instructions could cause it to become abnormal and not do its job, so it would sit there like a lump of uselessness. As that cell makes new generations of cells, it will pass on the garbled message which may become even more garbled. The rate of making new generations may have even been affected, making more cells faster, resulting in your lump of useless cells growing in size at a faster rate.
Normally the Immune system will take care of it or the cell "clump" won't have enough oxygen & nutrients to sustain itself, both scenarios in which it dies off. This happens near-constantly in your body. "Cancer" as we think of it happens when both of these obstacles are overcome and the clump can survive and continue growing.
>>14159871That can be thanked in part to:
-Longer lifespans (risk of cancer correlates with age)
-Better healthcare (at least, the potential to access healthcare facilities)
-A better understanding of cancer (especially after the human genome project in the early '00s)
-Better methods for detection (including a better understanding of what to look for)
A similar example is how the rate of autism diagnoses increased after 1981, the year in which it was classified as a separate condition from asperger's.
