fuck cancer
I did a ride with the Fireflies West (http://www.fireflieswest.com) cycling/fundraiser group this past year, and that was our motto. Indeed, fuck cancer.
U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
21–30 of 120 posts
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#22The problem is this is mostly due to screening, not progress at treating advanced cancer, although that has improved too.
I think this would only matter if some of the additional detected cancer would have gone away on its own. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's impossible.
It's different for e.g. Flu, where more testing = more detection of an illness that would not necessarily have become serious, had it gone undetected.
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#23The problem is this is mostly due to screening, not progress at treating advanced cancer, although that has improved too.
That’s not a problem, it’s the key to curing cancers, according to Craig Venter @15:40 early detection is the way to eliminate cancer: https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8 https://youtu.be/iUqgTYbkHP8?t=15m37s The reason people die from pancreatic cancer when they get it is because we can’t detect it early.
"problem" is a bit of a strong word, but when someone says "Cancer Death Rate Dropped" dropping people assume "Cancer Rate Dropped", which is not at all the same thing
The article provides no numbers about cancer rate dropping. Yet the false association between the two ideas is so strong that even the authors themselves seem to theorize that the cancer rate itself is dropping because people don't smoke as often now.
Conflating those two concepts seems like a Very Bad Idea
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#24More vaccines seems like one of the most straightforward future mitigations since viruses like Hepatitis/HPV/mono/HIV/herpes/etc cause almost a fifth of cancer cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus
That is a dubious claim. While links between HPV and cervical cancer are quite strong and well-defined, the associations with the other viruses you cite are only correlative. Also, Hep C, HIV and herpes have no vaccine, so unclear what your statement is referring to anyway? What has contributed to a drop in cancer mortality would be advances in treatment (like targeted therapies and immunoncology), better image/blood…
> While links between HPV and cervical cancer are quite strong and well-defined, the associations with the other viruses you cite are only correlative.
HPV is merely correlative, as well. That's basically how all endogenous cancers work. With Epstein-Barr Virus the association is quite strong, though the incidence of EBV-induced cancers doesn't seem to be quite as large as HPV--~1% vs 2-3%.
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get what you're saying: it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison since better screening means we're comparing cancers of different severities. I don't necessarily see that as a problem, though, since a lot of these earlier screened cancers would have become more advanced cancers down the line. If our testing were perfect such that we could detect all cancers early enough to stop, that would functionally be a c…
The "US Cancer Death Rate" talked about in the article is measured in deaths per 100,000 population, not deaths per detected cancer. So we are comparing apples to apples, but finding and treating cancers earlier could be helping to result in fewer deaths.
Or it could simply mean that another cause of death has increased. Like heart disease/diabetes from ever increasing obesity rates.
A person can't die twice, so if heart disease gets them first, then they won't die of cancer.
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get what you're saying: it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison since better screening means we're comparing cancers of different severities. I don't necessarily see that as a problem, though, since a lot of these earlier screened cancers would have become more advanced cancers down the line. If our testing were perfect such that we could detect all cancers early enough to stop, that would functionally be a c…
The "US Cancer Death Rate" talked about in the article is measured in deaths per 100,000 population, not deaths per detected cancer. So we are comparing apples to apples, but finding and treating cancers earlier could be helping to result in fewer deaths.
Seems less of a problem, more of a success.
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#27The problem is this is mostly due to screening, not progress at treating advanced cancer, although that has improved too.
There have been some wonderful advances in cancer therapy, such as immunotherapy. For example, Rituxan (rituximab) only dates to 1997, but it's already in a number of chemotherapy protocols, leading to a clear improvement in survival rates in previously difficult-to-treat cancers such as aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rituximab
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6398399/
Flashier, and something I've already talked about, is CAR T-cell therapy, the first generations of which were approved in 2017. This therapy has definite risks of severe side-effects, but it can result in complete remission of cancers that have survived multiple lines of chemotherapy, as happened with me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR_T_cell
Immunotherapy isn't just promising, it's here, and, because of it, so am I, but even more exciting is that it gives us more avenues of research to build off of known-useful therapies.
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#28The problem is this is mostly due to screening, not progress at treating advanced cancer, although that has improved too.
I wouldn't use the word "problem" but to explain it better, cancer rate itself has not dropped necessarily but due to early detection, number of deaths from cancer has dropped. We still have a long way to go to actual be able to cure cancers especially in advanced stages. Still a good win but more work to do.
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#29The problem is this is mostly due to screening, not progress at treating advanced cancer, although that has improved too.
There have been some wonderful advances in cancer therapy, such as immunotherapy. For example, Rituxan (rituximab) only dates to 1997, but it's already in a number of chemotherapy protocols, leading to a clear improvement in survival rates in previously difficult-to-treat cancers such as aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rituximab https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6398399/ Fl…
Congrats for your success!
Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991
#30The problem is this is mostly due to screening, not progress at treating advanced cancer, although that has improved too.
I think this would only matter if some of the additional detected cancer would have gone away on its own. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's impossible. It's different for e.g. Flu, where more testing = more detection of an illness that would not necessarily have become serious, had it gone undetected.
>detected cancer would have gone away on its own. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's impossible.
What if they detect a slow growing cancer that wouldn't have become a problem before you hit the age of 150? Not every cancer is aggressively trying to eat its host whole.