I remember reading a story a while back about progress made on deaths from heart attacks versus progress made on deaths from cancer. The key thing they zeroed in on was the fact that heart research focused on prevention first. They determined early on that it was too late to do anything once someone shows up in the ER with a heart attack. So, heart research focused on prevention.

While cancer was stuck in trying to cure the disease once someone had it. Overall the article stated not much progress had been made on cancer relative to progress made in heart attacks.

So I'm a little suspicious that cancer can now claim we're winning because of prevention. If you stop smoking it's helps BOTH cancer and heart attacks. I remember the group who pushed people to stop smoking, forever, was the heart association. Remember that little heart logo on all the ads?

This is overall good news, and I hope the researches focus more on prevention and research into what causes it. I find it tremendously interesting that "the cure" has been our focus for so long in medicine. I think drugs like Penicillin that cure got us stuck in that meme because they were so much a miracle. However, prevention is another tactic that's probably not been effectively utilized to keep us healthy.