ABSTRACT
Age is the most important risk factor for cancer. Cancer incidence at age 80 is nearly 250 times as great as at age 8. While it is trite to say that a group of 80-year-olds is much more diverse than a group of 8-year-olds, nonetheless, uniformity is a characteristic of youth and diversity a characteristic of old age. On this basis alone, it is likely that there is diversity among cancers afflicting the elderly. A critical question, for which there is no answer at present, is whether or not old people have old tumors. Some neoplastic cell lines are immortal, seemingly having escaped aging altogether. Whether or not tumors age, hosts do age, particularly in regard to immunocompetence. Tumor growth is obviously a product of intrinsic cellular factors as well as host factors, some of which may be humoral and thus affect tumors directly.
