Progress against cancer? Let ' s think about it.

It is difficult to pick up a newspaper these days without reading an article proclaiming progress in the field of cancer research. Here is an example, taken from an article posted on the MedicineNet site (1). The lead-off text is: " Statistics (released in 1997) show that cancer patients are living longer and even " beating " the disease. Information released at an AMA sponsored conference for science writers, showed that the death rate from the dreaded disease has decreased by three percent in the last few years. In the 1940s only one patient in four survived on the average. By the 1960s, that figure was up to one in three, and now has reached 50% survival. " < br > < br > Optimism is not confined to the lay press. In 2003, then NCI Director Andrew von Eschenbach, announced that the NCI intended to " eliminate death and suffering " from cancer by 2015 (2), (3). Update: it ' s 2016 and still no cancer cure. < br > < br > Bullish assessments for progress against cancer are a bit misleading. There is ample historical data showing that the death rate from cancer has been rising throughout the twentieth century, and that the burden of new cancer cases will rise throughout the first half of the twenty-first century (4). If you confine your attention to the advanced common cancers (the cancers that cause the greatest number of deaths in humans), we find that the same common cancers that were responsible for the greatest numbers of deaths in 1950 are the same cancers killi...
Source: Specified Life - Category: Information Technology Tags: cancer cancer cure cancer statistics cancer treatments orphan diseases progress in cancer research rare diseases Source Type: blogs