Cancer incidence declines for first time

Some critics say not enough is being done to emphasize prevention.

Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The pace at which Americans are getting cancer has started to decline for the first time, marking what could be a long-awaited turning point in the battle against the disease, according to an annual report that tracks progress in the war on cancer.

Cancer deaths have also continued a decline that began in the early 1990s, meaning that for the first time both trend lines are dropping.

“It is a significant milestone,” said Otis Brawley, chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, which produces the report with the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. “It is a really big deal.”

The drop in cancer incidence has been driven largely by declines in many of the leading forms of cancer — lung, prostate and colorectal cancer in men, and breast and colorectal cancer in women.

“The take-home message is that many of the things we’ve been telling people to do to be healthy have finally reached the point where we can say that they are working,” Brawley said. “These things are really starting to pay off.”

Brawley and others cautioned, however, that part of the reduction could be due to fewer people getting screened for prostate and breast cancers. In addition, the rates at which many other types of cancer are being diagnosed are still increasing, he said, and overall, far too many Americans are still getting and dying from cancer.

About 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer each year, and 560,000 die from if.

“We still have a lot to do,” Brawley said. “If you look at the data it’s clear that we could still do much better — much, much better.”

Some experts argue that the decrease in new cases is primarily the result of a drop in lung cancer, which is due to declines in smoking that occurred decades ago. They criticized the ongoing focus on detecting and treating cancer and called for more focus on prevention.

“The whole cancer establishment has been focused on treatment, which has not been terribly productive,” said John C. Bailar III, who studies cancer trends at the National Academy of Sciences. “I think what people should conclude from this is we ought to be putting most of our resources where we know there has been progress, almost in spite of what we’ve done, and stop this single-minded focus on treatment.”

Bailar and others argue that research should emphasize identifying the underlying causes of cancer, such as environmental exposures, to prevent cancer from occurring in the first place.

Others, while agreeing that more research is needed on both prevention and treatment, hailed the development.

“We are really seeing that the investment in cancer research is really starting to pay off,” said Ellen Sigal of the Friends of Cancer Research, an advocacy group.