WE AREN'T DOING THAT DAMNED WELL

Newfoundland, 2001

 

Okay, enough of feeling good.  My great granddaughter Evelyn is three days old, healthy, cute as a button, and never cries.  She is destined to make us all very proud.  All that goes without saying.  The thing is, though:  will she cure ovarian cancer?  I sure hope so, because we aren’t doing very damned well at the moment. 

I have discovered an interesting NCI web site that gives cancer statistics of all sorts and flavors.  If I think of it I will put it at the end of this blurb.  I spent much of yesterday playing with it.  Here is what I found.

First of all, remember that somewhere around 1972 we (the Feds) declared a “War on Cancer”, modeled on the Manhattan project that gave us the atomic bomb in less than five years.  The idea was to direct the might of American science and technology, lubricated by boxcar-loads of money, at the total elimination of cancer.  We all know that failed.  With regard to ovarian cancer, let me tell you how badly it failed.

In 1975, 10 of every 100,000 women in the United States died of ovarian cancer.  In 2010, after nobody knows how much effort and expense, that number was reduced to – 8.5!

We have done slightly better with regard to 5-year survival statistics.  In 1975, 33% of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer lived five years.  In 2010, it was 44%.  Almost certainly that improvement can be credited preponderantly to earlier diagnosis.  Early detection is important, that’s for sure. 

Here is an interesting statistic: black women are significantly less likely to die of ovarian cancer than  white women.  Genetics?  Life style?  Who knows?

The War on Cancer has done somewhat better  by  some other cancers.  For instance, in 1975 deaths from colorectal cancer in the United States were 28/100,000.  By 2010 that had been reduced by nearly half, to 15/100,000.  Several other cancers (e.g., prostate) show similar improvement, but others (e.g., pancreatic) do not.

I don’t know about you, but I find all this depressing , discouraging and, in a way, a bit infuriating.  It almost seems like we need a radical paradigm shift.  It’s as if for the last  35 years we have been attempting to produce a real fast buggy by fiddling with the wheel bearings  and  the horse’s harness.  What we need to do is to invent the automobile.

http://seer.cancer.gov/faststats/selections.php?