SEER

 From front to back:  Whiskers, a tiny bit of soft fluff; Murphy, my Ancient Enemy, the Prince of Darkness; Linda, my much adored and badly miss wife/

Do you think cancer can be fun?  Well, hell no!  I hate it as much as anyone (probably a lot more  having watched Linda die of OVCA), but I admit to amusing myself from time to time, playing with the following set of official NIH statistics.  The program is known as SEER, which codes for Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program, and you can access it using this web address.

https://seer.cancer.gov/

There is virtually no end to the variety of cancer statistics one can conjure up using this resource – although a modest amount of patience and determination may be required.  For instance, with the web site up and running, click on “Start Exploring”, then use the ensuing plot to ask for long term trends in ovarian cancer.  If you do this correctly you should obtain a graph showing several surprising things:  (1) since the year 2000 the incidence of ovarian cancer has declined all fractionally among white women, but not for their black counterparts. (2) Throughout that period white women have been more afflicted by OVCA, although of late the curves appear to merge.  A little more fiddling will provide you with a graph showing that, from 1975 to present, OVCA incidence has declined fractionally; I find that curious, don’t you? 

Also somewhat surprising is the “incidence of prostate cancer” graph; there, black Americans are shown to be less fortunate than the rest of society.

I will stop here.  There is virtually no end to the time you can waste using the SEER program.  Grim stuff, yes, but important!