U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 22% since 1991
reuters.com
reuters.com
1. Read the article, or at least skim it before commenting. The rates listed are population normalized, it would be a very bizarre thing indeed if some other cause of death was preferentially killing people before they got old enough to die of cancer yet somehow still caused overall life expectancy to increase.
2. Acquaint yourself with some basic statistics on causes of death in recent times, such as this easy to read infographic from a few months ago: http://www.bloomberg.com/dataview/2014-04-17/how-americans-d...
As you'll see, death rates for all age groups have been in decline across the board since 1991. People aren't dying due to obesity or diabetes instead of cancer, they're just dying less, mostly regardless of cause.
So please stop needlessly injecting your speculation and biases into the comments here, please only put forward arguments which are consistent with the well-established facts as we know them. Thanks.
Then maybe you'll allow me to comment, sir!
What a truly strange thing to say.
"I elect myself thread moderator!"
Let's not act like needless comments and speculation don't have the potential to add to a topic of discussion, they do.
You were really, really lucky.
A drop in cancer deaths is probably related to two things: a drop in smoking, and an increase in obesity that's killing people before they can get cancer.
And yes, I'm aware there are curable cancers. Hell, there are skin cancers that have never been particularly dangerous. But the number of types that used to be deadly that we can now cure is a drop in the bucket. Like I said - four months. In the vast majority of cases we can keep you alive for a few months longer. Otherwise it may as well be 1970.
Can you cite this? I suspect it's an average, and thus not very useful. (Ie: some people are living a lot longer, enough to drive the overall average up 4 months, not most people are living 4 months longer).
Highly recommended reading, BTW, though it's a bit depressing.
For the average to go up only four months either we're doing really well against a tiny percentage of cancers or we're doing generally a tiny bit better against most cancers. Or some combination of the two. Either way you look at it that's an indication of lack of progress.
Hold on there. There have been several major advances in the treatment of cancer. Take a look at the leukemias. CML used to be a death sentence. Now, you can take Gleevec and you'll eventually die, but it won't be because of the cancer anymore. That drug turned a rapidly fatal cancer into a chronic, treatable condition.
For the most part we've fine-tuned chemo regimens such that you life a bit longer and don't suffer as much. Well, the suffering is postponed, anyhow.
Another interesting fact is if you look at US deaths, fewer die between the age of 60 and 80 than before and after. Seems like if you can make it to sixty you'll die of old age or some random cancer.
Medicaid kicks in at age 65. I suspect that people over 65 get disproportionately more funding which is why the US does well with people over that age.
Edit. To answer my own question it seems to be the very vague "All other causes" [1].
Overall US death rate went down from 8.5 to 8.0 between 1991 and 2011 (ie 6%). So every cause of death might have gone down (although I couldn't find the stats).
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php#top_10_l...
The rate of 169 per 100k is confirmed in this story as well.
1991: page 9 of http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/lead1900_98.pdf
2011: page 4 of http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf
Over the same time heart disease dropped from 720,862 in 1991 to 596,339 in 2011. This is much more impressive.
The metric described in the news article is deaths by cancer per 100,000 individuals.
What you calculated is the percentage of deaths due to cancer.
I don't have access to the scientific article that was the foundation of this news piece but it looks like the reduction in death rate was not the authors' main point [1].
Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world.[2]
Yes, people all around the world eventually die of something, but they are dying at ever later ages after longer and longer spans of healthy living all around the world. That's why we can say that death rates are going down. As the link you found after your comment edit says, "Although single year improvements in mortality were often small, the age-adjusted risk of dying dropped 60 percent from 1935 to 2010."
After edit: another participant here in another comment links to CDC documents that plainly show the drop in all-cause death rates in the United States.
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...
[2] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...
I hate to be this way, but as horrible as cancer is, the modes of death behind it are not to be ... advertised. My mother in law went to Alzheimers. Wouldn't wish that on anyone. As Hank Williams said, "I'll never get out of this world alive".
EDIT: Found this exert after going through the whole Cancer Institute pdf: " The overall rate of cancer cases (incidence) remained stable for women between 2007 and 2011, but declined by 1.8 percent per year for men.
Men experienced relatively rapid declines in cases of colon cancer (3.6 percent per year), lung cancer (3 percent per year) and prostate cancer (2.1 percent per year) during that period, the report found.
But there's been no change in incidence rates for breast cancer. And the report found that certain cancers are even on the rise. For example, thyroid cancer cases increased an average 4.5 percent per year between 2007 and 2011, and liver cancer cases have increased by more than 3 percent.
The increase in liver cancer cases is largely due to hepatitis C infection, mainly through intravenous drug use and sharing needles in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Jemal said.
The rise in thyroid cancer cases cannot be easily explained, Jemal said. Some suspect the condition may be now overdiagnosed due to the overuse of imaging scans and ultrasound, he said, but there's also been an increase in the size of cancerous lesions found.
"For thyroid, it's very difficult to explain what's occurring," he said"
Either way, we are living longer though.
The other way to take advantage is to get yourself screened :)
Disclosure: I own shares
There's a few different approaches going on right now including (1) studying mechanisms of how tumors become drug resistant, (2) stimulating the immune system to better target the tumors, and (3) figuring out how to make those solid tumors spongy again.