This is a quick comment from @martinberkhan on:

Why Do Cancer Rates Increase As We Age? http://bit.ly/LCIVDN

It's not mentioned anywhere in the article on Medical News Today (or study abstract on Nature), but one of these "mechanisms" DeGregori refers to here...:

'In addition, DeGregori explains that as humans have evolved, our bodies have had to develop new mechanisms to maintain our tissues and avoid disease.'

...is autophagy*, which decreases with age. As some of you may have heard, intermittent fasting has been shown to increase autophagy.

In summary, why cancer rates increases as we age, is partly related to reduced rates of autophagy independent of anything else. Since autophagy cleans up these oncogenic mutations and other dysfunctional cells, the ultimate consequence of the age dependent decrease in autophagy is an increased risk of cancer.

* This is a very educated guess, since I haven't read the full text paper yet. Someone is welcome to email it to me, if you have it.

/ @martinberkhan