WASHINGTON — Colorectal cancer is a threat not just to older adults but increasingly to young men and women, too. It’s now the top cancer killer of Americans younger than 50.
The deaths of “Dawson’s Creek” actor James Van Der Beek at 48 last week, and “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman at 43 in 2020, highlight the risk for younger adults.
“We’re now starting to see more and more people in the 20-, 30- and 40-year-old range developing colon cancer. At the beginning of my career, nobody that age had colorectal cancer,” said Dr. John Marshall of Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, who has been a cancer doctor for more than three decades.
That trend “is shaking us all, to be blunt,” said Marshall, who is also medical consultant to the Colorectal Cancer…