Fewer Americans Are Getting Cancer
With cancer, we tend to focus on survivability rate. And there’s certainly been a lot of good news on that front as new medicines, treatments and procedures have allowed more people to either survive cancer entirely or at least survive longer than they would have.
But, as Ronald Bailey notes, not getting cancer in the first place is even better than surviving it.
Yesterday Secretary of Health Katherine Sebelius, in defending Obamacare, claimed that America had the health outcomes of a third world country. You wouldn’t know that looking at our cancer statistics:
Trend analysis showed that overall cancer incidence rates for all racial and ethnic groups combined decreased by 0.8% per year during the most recent period, 2003–2007 (Table 1); a statistically significant decrease of 0.6% per year was noted in women, whereas a non-statistically significant decrease of 0.8% per year was noted in men that was influenced by a recent (2005–2007) non-statistically significant increase in prostate cancer incidence. Incidence for prostate and breast cancers, two of the most frequently diagnosed cancers, showed possible changing trends. Cancer of the prostate showed a non-statistically significant annual increase of 3.0% in 2005–2007, after a statistically significant decrease in 2001–2005. The trend analysis of breast cancer in women showed a decrease from 1999 until 2007. However, inspection of the annual breast cancer incidence rates during this period (data not shown) revealed that, after a sharp decrease in rates in 2002–2003, the lower rates subsequently remained stable.
More, from Bailey:
Looking further back, the article also reports that the average annual percentage change in cancer incidence has been falling at a rate of 0.8 percent for both sexes since 1998. Looking at the more recent trend, the report finds that cancer incidence declined a 1 percent per year between 2003 and 2007. Overall cancer death rates declined by 1.4 percent per year between 1998 and 2007. More recently, cancer death rates fell by 1.6 percent per year between 2003 and 2007.
Judging by all the commercials for trial lawyers and their class action suits on television, not to mention sensationalist media stories about this or that consumer product causing cancer, you’d think that cancer rates in this country were skyrocketing. They’re not.
Not only does America have the best cancer survival rates in the world, but the number of people getting cancer to begin with is falling.
Tags: cancer, Health Care, katherine sebelius
