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U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

wsj.com

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Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

#31

Post by vineyardmike »

docdendrite wrote: post #13
myroon5 wrote: post #5

More 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…

> the associations with the other viruses you cite are only correlative. Also, Hep C, HIV and herpes have no vaccine

And poster's own link doesn't claim some of the viruses are actually an oncovirus.

That said, I don't think that pushing vaccines (either in research or into arms) for the listed diseases would be bad.

Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

#32

Post by chimeracoder »

londons_explore wrote: post #25
timerol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Or it could simply mean that another cause of death has increased. Like heart disease/diabetes from ever increasing obesity rates.

You could hardly have picked a worse counterexample. Deaths from heart disease have fallen dramatically over that time period, even faster than cancer deaths have dropped.

Deaths from strokes - which at one point equalled deaths from all cancers combined - have fallen as well, although much of that drop occurred before the time period in question.

Deaths from diabetes are actually quite few in number compared to heart disease and cancer. They've sort of plateaued over this time interval, which isn't good news, but hardly the alternate explanation for the reduction in cancer deaths.

Now, there is one big cause of death which we haven't addressed: COVID-19, which causes about 3x the number of deaths as diabetes, and over half the number of deaths as all cancers combined. But that only began in 2020, and this data shows a decrease across the entire interval, so it's not relevant here.

Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

#33

Post by pfg »

docdendrite wrote: post #13
myroon5 wrote: post #5

More 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…

> Also, Hep C, HIV and herpes have no vaccine, so unclear what your statement is referring to anyway?

OP is talking about more vaccines as possible future mitigations - more vaccines as in new vaccines, not more vaccinations using existing ones (though that wouldn't hurt either.)

Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

#35

Post by chimeracoder »

jagraff wrote: post #8
nluken wrote: post #4

Earlier 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 thing we don't know is which early cancers actually progress to advanced cancer. It's possible that we detect more things that look like cancer, but that would not have ever progressed into full blown metastatic cancer (at least, not before the patient died of something else). So that could artificially make it look like we've gotten better at treating cancer, when actually we've just gotten better at detecting n…

> So that could artificially make it look like we've gotten better at treating cancer, when actually we've just gotten better at detecting non-life-threatening cancer.

No, because the death rate is measured at the population level, not at the incidence level. Fewer people are dying today of cancer than 30 years ago.

The only way that detection bias could impact that outcome is if you make the argument that a large number of terminal cancer cases were going undetected in 1991 at the time of death.

Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

#36

Post by Retric »

ZainRiz wrote: post #23
melling wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The % of the US population that dies every year from cancer has dramatically reduced. The % the US population that is detected to have cancer is up dramatically.

The rate of people getting cancer in the US is a different question, but presumably it’s been increasing due to the aging population independent of other causes. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the...

Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

#39

Post by TylerE »

chimeracoder wrote: post #32
londons_explore wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Or it could simply mean that another cause of death has increased. Like heart disease/diabetes from ever increasing obesity rates. You could hardly have picked a worse counterexample. Deaths from heart disease have fallen dramatically over that time period, even faster than cancer deaths have dropped. Deaths from strokes - which at one point equalled deaths from all cancers combined - have fallen as well, although…

Diabetes is almost never the direct cause of death, but it’s damn hard in the body. Hurts circulation, hurts your nerves, hurts your organs… and it can flare badly in reaction to some medications.

So, the cause of death won’t be “diabetes”, it’ll be heart attack, stroke, chronic infection, something like that.

Similar to AIDS in that it doesn’t kill you directly (not that we know that juvenile diabetes is a thing, and we routinely test for it), it just makes any other health challenge much dicier.

Re: U.S. cancer death rate has dropped by a third since 1991

#40

Post by smt88 »

paulpauper wrote: post #3

The problem is this is mostly due to screening, not progress at treating advanced cancer, although that has improved too.

It's mostly due to the reduction in smoking, not screening. Screening helps, but it often extends lifespan and healthspan rather than preventing a death.
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