Happy Birthday Cancer !

30-year-old `war' on cancer far from over

Larry Lipman / Cox News Service 23dec01

WASHINGTON - The "war on cancer" is 30 years old today. Total victory is nowhere in sight.

The cost, in terms of deaths and dollars, is staggering. Since President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act into law on Dec. 23, 1971, more than 12 million Americans have died from cancer. The government has spent more than $45 billion on cancer research.

But while medical science has conquered other diseases, "the big C" is still very much with us.

Each year, 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer and 560,000 die from the disease. That is 1,500 people a day.

Half of the men and one-third of the women in the United States will have cancer in their lifetimes. One-fourth of all Americans will die from cancer. The overall rate of death from cancer is as high today as it was 30 years ago about 200 deaths per 100,000 population.

Within the next 10 to 15 years, unless there is a dramatic medical breakthrough, cancer will become the leading cause of death in the country, overtaking heart disease.

Despite the enormous toll, many battles have been won.

Testicular cancer and Hodgkin's disease rates have dropped nearly 70 percent. Breast cancer deaths per 100,000 people have dropped 14 percent. Death rates from cancers of the cervix, stomach, uterus, colon, bladder, thyroid and larynx also are down.

An estimated 8.5 million Americans are cancer survivors.

"In each and every cancer, there's likely to be a different part that's broken," said Dr. Brian Druker, director of the Leukemia Center at Oregon Health and Science University and lead investigator for Gleevec. "In each and every cancer, we've got to figure out what part's broken before we can fix it."

In its 2001 Cancer Progress Report, the National Cancer Institute's former director, Dr. Richard Klausner, noted that Americans are more in tune with potential causes of cancer - such as smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise - and are more likely to receive cancer screenings that can detect early stages of malignancy. The earlier cancer is caught, the better chance a patient has of surviving.

But there are disturbing trends in the opposite direction, Klausner noted. Smoking has, until very recently, been rising among teenagers. People are taking fewer precautions against sun damage, and skin cancer rates are skyrocketing.