The Observation That Cancer Incidence Increases Sharply with Age Was

Multiple Choice

The observation that cancer incidence increases sharply with age was one of the first clues that multiple mutations had to accumulate in one cell before cancer arose. If only one mutation were needed to occur in a single cell for cancer to develop, and if the probability of acquiring a mutation is assumed to be a constant that does not change with age, what would you predict to be the relationship between cancer incidence and age?

A) Cancer rate would be higher at younger ages and lower at older ages.
B) Cancer incidence would increase even more sharply with age than it actually does.
C) Cancer rate would increase linearly with age (a plot of cancer incidence versus age would give a straight line with positive slope; the line "goes uphill") .
D) Cancers would never occur.
E) Cancer rate would not change with age.