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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

> The US is barely in the top among developed nations, and it's not much better than the next 10-15 countries: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/data-cancer....

First, you're posting data that isn't relevant: that's the rate of cancer incidence, not the survival rates. That says nothing about how well the cancer is treated.

Secondly, it's nonsensical to compare aggregated cancer statistics between countries, because the demographics vary drastically, many cancer risk factors are highly hereditary, and the survival rates for different types of cancers vary so dramatically.

If you look at the actual survival rates, once adjusted for racial composition and type of cancer, the US comes out far ahead. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18639491

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Yes, I posted the wrong data. Sorry. See above :-)

1. The data you posted is 20 years old.

2. The data is talking about 5 year survival rates and not actual survival. The US Healthcare system is great at keeping people alive who should have stopped treatment long ago.

3. The US is behind on every other major health indicator, Infant Mortality, Life Expectancy, Cardiovascular Disease, Obesity etc. Cancer isn't the only expensive illness in the US.

This thread is overrun with Astroturfers.

> 1. The data you posted is 20 years old.

It's from a study published 10 years ago. The study was repeated more recently and republished less than a year ago, reaffirming the original results.

> 2. The data is talking about 5 year survival rates and not actual survival. The US Healthcare system is great at keeping people alive who should have stopped treatment long ago.

There is no such thing as "actual survival". 5-year survival rates are the global standard for cancer epidemiology.

> 3. The US is behind on every other major health indicator, Infant Mortality, Life Expectancy, Cardiovascular Disease, Obesity etc. Cancer isn't the only expensive illness in the US.

This thread is about cancer, in response to an article posted about cancer.

> This thread is overrun with Astroturfers.

From the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data.

Aren't those 5 year survival rates from time of diagnosis?

If so, it is possible for two countries that have the same survival rate measured from actual onset of the cancer to have a different 5 year survival rate.

I think it's always from time of diagnosis. Determining the "actual onset" of cancer would be little more than a guessing game.

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