Nova Scotia
I am at home (Bellingham) temporarily on a sort of layover
between trips to Alaska and Borrego Springs.
I will be settled into my BS digs by 1/12, and shortly thereafter my
usual hatch of lugubrious cancer blogs will resume. Also, if the spirit moves me I will add to my
other blog – Frivolities – which most of you have neglected shamefully.
So while I’m here I may as well check what’s new,
right? So I did, and almost wished I
hadn’t. Here, for instance is the latest
from the NCI on OVCA screening. The
gist: don’t bother, it doesn’t help.
The group I used to try to help at Fred Hutch focused on
discovering an early-warning biomarker for OVCA. We failed.
I hope somebody succeeds, and soon.
Early stage OVCA is highly curable.
On another matter, Yahoo News was up-beat: cancer
death rates overall have dropped 25% in the past few decades – the rate of decrease is
fairly steady, at 1.5% per year. Of
course, much of that is merely the plucking of low-hanging fruit; about half is
due to reduction in smoking, for instance.
Curious racial differences persist; for example, black men remain 47%
more likely to die of cancer than white men.
As for the cancer type central to this blog, the news is not
so encouraging. OVCA is listed as one of
the ten most lethal cancers, by the NCI.
Over the past 2.5 decades deaths from OVCA dropped about 11%. That’s better than nothing, but not
enough. My beautiful wife was one of those deaths.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cancer-death-rates-fall-prevention-184300430.html
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