Stupid Cancer FTW (For All The Wrong Reasons)

Business Insider spent a year documenting how cancer is eating adolescents and young adults alive and still managed to bury the lede: Has everything the AYA cancer movement been for naught? (Spoiler: No)

They interviewed dozens of patients, doctors, researchers. They called it “The True Cost of Young Cancer.” Beautiful title. Seriously. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Except they forgot to mention the real cost is that we die younger, broker, and more gaslit than our parents ever did.

Cancer in your 20s, 30s, 40s is skyrocketing. You know what their big revelation was? “Eat more fiber. Get enough sleep. Ventilate when cooking.”

Meanwhile, Jennifer Goldsack got late-stage colon cancer at 42. Tracy Robert was denied colonoscopies for years before her diagnosis at 40. J.J. Singleton got stage 4 at 27.

But sure, tell us about Mediterranean diets. 🫒

I helped build the Young Adult Cancer Movement with an army of angries back in 2007 because we had nowhere to land. No age specific care. No peer community. No navigation that spoke our language or fought our paperwork wars. The letters A-Y-A had never been spoken in succession until that point.

Business Insider actually wrote—and I’m not making this up—that the “exposome” (fancy word for all the toxic shit we breathe, eat, and absorb) matters as much as diet. Then spent three paragraphs on kale. 🥬

The system pumps carcinogens into our air, water, and food for decades, then tells us to do yoga when we get cancer at 35.

FWIW, Stupid Cancer had this exact conversation at the OMG! Cancer Summit for Young Adults back in 2011. What good is juicing kale when you’re breathing in LA smog and eating Agribusiness finest toxic crops? (If you were there, it’s time for a colonoscopy)

Jeez, BI. Do some homework next time.

Here’s what they got right but didn’t scream loud enough:

Patient navigators save lives.

They save lives because they understand insurance rules, code loopholes, appeal cycles, and filing mechanisms that block care access. They prevent people from slipping through bureaucratic cracks large enough to swallow living patients.

The screening age for colonoscopies dropped to 45 in 2021. Know how many insurers “forgot” to update their systems? Know how many 45-year-olds are still being told to wait while polyps turn into tumors?

“Trust your instincts,” they advise. My instinct says the system is designed to kill us before we qualify for Medicare.

Business Insider calls young cancer a “crisis.”

Ya think?

If this hits home, drop your horror story in the comments and tell me where you have seen it happen. How about a rage repost? Or tag a former colleague just for fun. Every impression pushes this in front of more people who deal with the same mess.

Are you new here? My condolences and my thanks. Follow along and stay loud with the rest of us. More voices means more pressure on a system that counts on silence

SOURCE ➡️ https://www.businessinsider.com/young-people-cancer-crisis-risk-tips-2025-11