There are some types of questions that take a while to form in my mind; ones that settle in slowly, often after the noise has gone, after the practicalities have been dealt with, after the world has had the decency to move on while you are still stood in the same place. They are not loud., they do not demand, they simply wait; why did that happen?
When someone dies from a colorectal tumour, a growth in the lower bowel, the medical explanation exists. It can be written down, diagrammed, filed neatly in a report: cells changed, DNA damaged, growth unchecked. The cancer spread making the outcome inevitable. The language is precise and clinical, which is useful for doctors and entirely inadequate for everyone else. Because what sits underneath is not the mechanism, it’s the cause, and more specifically, whether there was something, anything, that might explain why this person, at this time, on this path lost his life at such as young age.
A recent 2025 study has drawn attention to something that sounds obscure but is quietly unsettling. A toxin called colibactin, produced by certain strains of Escherichia coli, has been shown to damage DNA in the lining of the colon. Not in a vague way, but in a distinct, traceable pattern, a kind of biological fingerprint. When researchers looked at tumours in younger adults, that fingerprint appeared more often than expected. This does not provide a single answer and is not a neat explanation that ties things off. What it does is introduce a plausible thread: exposure to particular bacteria, possibly earlier in life, may leave behind damage that accumulates over time. Years later, that damage may contribute to the development of cancer. It is a mechanism, not a verdict or an explantion; however, once you know it, it is difficult not to turn it over in your mind.
If someone spent years around boats, in close quarters, in environments where hygiene was variable and often improvised, it is not unreasonable to wonder about exposure. Sailing has a particular reality: it’s freedom and salt air and open water, but it’s also shared spaces, cramped heads, holding tanks that behave unpredictably, and a general acceptance that cleanliness is sometimes more aspirational than achieved.
Cleaning toilets on boats is not a glamorous task. It is necessary, routine, and often done without ceremony. It involves contact with waste systems that, by their nature, are not sterile. Over years, even decades, that is repeated exposure; nothing dramatic, not acute, but consistent. Some bosuns also have to deal with blockages caused by people putting items down the toilet that belonged in a bin. The question then forms itself, quietly and persistently; could that have played a part?
The honest answer is that there is no direct line that can be drawn. The presence of colibactin-producing bacteria does not guarantee disease. Many strains of Escherichia coli are harmless. The human gut is a complex ecosystem, shaped by diet, environment, genetics, and chance. Colorectal cancer is not caused by a single factor. It emerges from a convergence. That matters, because it prevents a false certainty: it avoids reducing a life, and a death, to a single variable. but this does not remove the question.
There is something deeply personal in trying to locate a cause that feels tangible – something that can be pointed to, even if only privately. Not for blame, but for understanding. It is an attempt to impose structural logic on something that feels illogically unstructured. In this case, the emerging science does offer a framework, but it is a broad one. It suggests that the microbiome, the community of bacteria that live within the body, may play a more active role in long-term health than previously understood. It raises the possibility that exposures earlier in life, even those that seem ordinary at the time, may have consequences that only become visible much later.
That is as far as it goes – and there is a quiet tension in that. There is enough information to prompt reflection, not enough to provide closure. And perhaps that is where this settles: not as an answer, but as part of the landscape of remembering.
It is easy, in hindsight, to look for significance in those details; to wonder if something routinely carried out by hundreds of bosuns carries an unseen hazard. What remains is not a conclusion, but something that raises questions that pop up in my mind; science is evolving. Finding answers is where most people find themselves when they are trying to make sense of something that does not easily resolve.
I know that there is a certain honesty in accepting that not every story, even now when technology finds solutions almost on a weekly basis, comes with a clear explanation attached. And no, it won’t stop me from carrying on questioning why he was taken from us. Alongside the more immediate things that have been taken away: the sound of his voice on our many chats, the routine of working together with someone who was incredibly intelligent, but deeply human, the kind of person that has high standards and cares about his work, family and friends.
