That's not at all what the data show. The charts make clear that AGE-ADJUSTED cancer rates are declining. People are living longer and healthier lives free of disease of any kind into much more advanced ages than before.
In deed cancer death rates have declined in the United States middle aged. But many other causes have not declined. The middle aged is the only age group with increasing death rates in the United States.
I can't. No country will accept me. I have clinical depression and likely PTSD which is a disqualifier for gaining citizenship or moving to most countries.
One might also want to break it down in more narrow age-specific rates. People might (given recent newspaper articles) worry that decreasing age-standardized rate overall hide increasing rates in younger age groups. But this is *not* the case, at least in Sweden.
There have been breakthroughs with bladder cancer meds that have had oncologists doing standing ovations at conferences when trial results are announced.
I’m part of this data and am extremely pleased too be alive.
I worked closely with a cancer surgeon, and I wondered how he kept a good outlook. He wondered how I did the same in climate. Turns out we both focus on the wins.
I have been fighting two different kinds of cancer simultaneously for 16 years and I am still alive because of the results you just presented. My odds of living another year or two increase each year as new drugs are found.
That’s only 34 yrs. Sounds long but it really isn’t considering there is no cure. This is what science does. It gave 33% of cancer victims the opportunity to continue to love and be loved maybe to contribute great things. Maybe become that next scientist.
This is why I don't put too much stock in the panic about cancer-causing chemicals in the environment.
Sure, it would be nice if they weren't there, and decades of exposure can give you cancer, but on the whole cancer deaths are declining.
Most people who smoke for 40 years *don't* get lung cancer.
My perspective is that humans exposed themselves to a tremendous amount of cancer causing material, starting with the industrial revolution. We get better and better. I agree that modern 'Awareness' has people freaked out in a way that does not match the data.
Also I think we're on the cusp of huge advances in cancer medicine. Look for dramatic decreases in the currently-prohibitive cost of "personalized" therapies.
When I want to think about progress I often think about this passage from “All Quiet on the Western Front” which describes what a cancer diagnosis meant a century ago during WW1:
The gray line shows the crude rate, which is the rate of deaths from cancer per 100,000 people. It has risen between 1950 and 1990 and has fallen slightly since then.
However, cancer death rates rise sharply with age, and the age of the US population has increased since 1950, so we would expect cancer death rates to rise for that reason alone.
What if we adjust for the increased age of the US population?
The red line, the age-standardized rate, shows this. It shows the cancer death rate if the age structure of the US population was held constant throughout.
This reduction comes from several factors: better screening and earlier diagnosis, medical advances in cancer treatments, and public health efforts to reduce risk factors like smoking and exposure to carcinogens.
Is this due to medical advances or regulations?
As humans create societies and evolve and grow, the number of diseases has increased significantly (I don't understand whether it's due to diagnosis or social factors).
It means that on average, the amount of people with depression (or cancer) hasn't necessarily increased (in terms of percentage). We simply may be diagnosing what 100 years ago may have been dismissed as "flu" or demonic possession.
Crude total mortality rate tend to be relatively stable in modern high-income societies, so crude cancer-specific rate is roughly proportional to the % of deaths due to cancer.
Lung cancer is the most common cancer cause of death in the US, but it's not at all the only one that's declined. There's a much larger decline for stomach cancer, as an example.
However, how many are bankrupt following their treatment? How many can afford ongoing insurance? How many have exclusions on their long term medical insurance for life?
Comments
Thank you
And I remember growing up in 90s and the war on cancer
Long term government investment in healthcare does work
I have to work on changes here.
https://ourworldindata.org/age-standardization
Many doctors didn't know about this until much later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori
I worked closely with a cancer surgeon, and I wondered how he kept a good outlook. He wondered how I did the same in climate. Turns out we both focus on the wins.
Thanks cancer researchers and practitioners!
Could that also be a factor to why cancer has gotten lower over the years?
Sure, it would be nice if they weren't there, and decades of exposure can give you cancer, but on the whole cancer deaths are declining.
Most people who smoke for 40 years *don't* get lung cancer.
To understand this, we can look at national cancer death rates in the United States.
The red line, the age-standardized rate, shows this. It shows the cancer death rate if the age structure of the US population was held constant throughout.
This means Americans are now one-third less likely to die from cancer at the same ages as Americans in 1990.
It was a bit after that when we mapped the human genome as well.
As humans create societies and evolve and grow, the number of diseases has increased significantly (I don't understand whether it's due to diagnosis or social factors).
The environment we live in today is different from that of 100 years ago.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates-by-type-who-db?facet=metric&uniformYAxis=0
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-death-rates-by-type-who-db?facet=none&uniformYAxis=0