LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND CANCER STATISTICS

Nice picture

In the “War on Cancer”, who is winning – cancer, or us?  Experts disagree; for instance, Vincent DeVita says we humans are winning

 (http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2016/03/warts-and-all.html)

 whereas Clifton Leak puts his money on cancer

 (http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-truth-in-small-doses-at-long-last_7.html)

 Me, I’m on the fence.  By and large we are inching ahead, but in some areas progress occurs in millimeters, not miles.  In a way this “War” reminds me of WW1 trench warfare; incredible quantities of resources expended, with little gain.

After all, we should be winning, right?  The enemy here is brute biology, driven by natural law.  It’s not as if Napoleon is lurking behind the line, plotting to do us in.  If we are losing it’s because we are doing some things wrong.  Some things we can’t prevent of course – aging, for instance, but others we can – sunscreen, fiber, boring diets leap to mind.  So cancer incidence and mortality should decrease and, by and large they do – but at a pitiful rate.

This by way of introducing the NCI Annual Report on the Status of Cancer, which you can read here

:

(http://www.cancer.gov/research/progress/annual-report-nation)

The report covers two areas: changes per year (2003-2012) in incidence (getting it) and mortality (dying from it).  For men, incidence is down (1.4)%, whereas for women there was no change.  Thyroid and liver cancer incidence in both groups were sharply up (>5%).  Ovarian cancer incidence declined minutely (0.9%).

The mortality graph is similar.  These figures are for 10 year mortality, so don’t swallow them whole.  Ten year mortality asks “was the patient alive 10 years after diagnosis?”  This means that if you were diagnosed in 1995 and were still alive in 2005, you go in the plus column – even if you die the next year.  As earlier diagnosis becomes feasible, this sort of “survival” statistic is bound to improve.  But, for what it’s worth: overall survival improved by 1.8%/year for men, and 1.6%/year for women.  Again, ovarian cancer survival improved a bit: 2.0%.

The report concludes with an interesting discussion of liver cancer, which has spiked recently.  The reason seems to be the effect of the hepatitis C virus, as well as excess boozing.  Men are three times more likely than women to contract liver cancer, and there is a clear correlation between liver cancer and race: for instance, liver cancer is more than twice as prevalent among Native Americans as among Anglos.  Lots of room here for speculation.