Yeah, pretty much. There are other examples of this where something harmful appears to be helpful when you don’t take into account possible selection biases (like being put into the ‘non-cancer death’ category); for example, this is an issue in smoking—you can find various correlations where smokers are healthier than non-smokers, but this is just because the unhealthier smokers got pushed over the edge by smoking and died earlier.
Am I missing a subtlety here, or is it just that cancer is usually one of those things that you hope to live long enough to get?
Yeah, pretty much. There are other examples of this where something harmful appears to be helpful when you don’t take into account possible selection biases (like being put into the ‘non-cancer death’ category); for example, this is an issue in smoking—you can find various correlations where smokers are healthier than non-smokers, but this is just because the unhealthier smokers got pushed over the edge by smoking and died earlier.