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U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 22% since 1991

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 22% since 1991

#5

Post by omonra »

danieltillett wrote: post #3

So what cause of death went up? Edit. To answer my own question it seems to be the very vague "All other causes" [1]. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db88.htm

Why do you think that any cause of death had to go up?

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.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005131.html

Re: U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 22% since 1991

#6

Post by danieltillett »

omonra wrote: post #5
danieltillett wrote: post #3

So what cause of death went up? Edit. To answer my own question it seems to be the very vague "All other causes" [1]. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db88.htm

Why do you think that any cause of death had to go up? 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.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005131.html

Not when Cancer is responsible for 1/3 of all deaths - the maths just don't work.

Re: U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 22% since 1991

#7

Post by e2e8 »

danieltillett wrote: post #3

So what cause of death went up? Edit. To answer my own question it seems to be the very vague "All other causes" [1]. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db88.htm

I think this is the relevant data:

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

Re: U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 22% since 1991

#9

Post by tsotha »

aosmith wrote: post #8

This is because of effective treatment. I was dx'ed with "fatal" cancer just over 10 years ago... Modern medicine FTW.

I doubt it has anything to do with treatment. On average we've been able to add a whopping four months to longevity since the '70s, and even that's questionable since we have better diagnostic equipment.

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.

Re: U.S. cancer deaths have fallen 22% since 1991

#10

Post by tokenadult »

danieltillett wrote: post #3

So what cause of death went up? Edit. To answer my own question it seems to be the very vague "All other causes" [1]. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db88.htm

No other cause went up to a meaningful degree in terms of death rates, which is what the submitted article mostly focused on. "The overall rate of deaths from cancer decreased from about 215 per 100,000 people in 1991 to about 169 per 100,000 people in 2011, researchers found." An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why"[1] Provides some of the background.

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...

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