WASHINGTON, DC - A deadlock that has gripped the longest and most expensive war in modern times - war against cancer - can finally eased. The cancer death rate in the US fell by 2.6% between 1991 and 1995, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced today, marking the first sustained decline 6 decades of modern cancer cases.
"This looks like a turning point in the war 25 years on cancer," Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said in a statement today. "It is not just a blip once, but a trend of real and promising fall." After a 6.4% increase in mortality from cancer between 1971 and 190, the decline suggests that lifestyle changes and improved treatments start paying.
For example, lung cancer mortality among men dropped 6.7%, representing more than half of the overall decline of 4.3% of cancer deaths in men. NCI attributes this decline in part to the 15% decrease between 1955 and 1970, the percentage of men who smoke. For women, however, lung cancer deaths increased, apparently because smoking among women increased in the 1960s increasing numbers of lung cancer offset strong gains against breast cancer because of diagnostic earlier and better treatment, keeping the overall decline in women's cancer mortality to only 1.1%.
African Americans seemed to make the biggest gains. They experienced an overall decline of 5.6% of cancer mortality, compared with an increase of 18.3% between 1971 and 190.
definitive cancer rates for 1995 will not be released before next year, but experts predict the downward trend will remain relatively unchanged. Says the NCI Director Richard Klausner, "The 190s will be remembered as the decade when we turned measurably tide against cancer."
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