A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization
Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
| Home | Search | About ASH | Why Join | Comment | Email page |
|
Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
|
Cancer Will Overtake Heart Disease as Leading Killer of Americans [02/01-5]
Excerpts from: How Cancer Rose to the Top of the Charts
By Jane Brody The New York Times [02/01/05]
An amazing statistic emerged just weeks ago that seems to have gotten somewhat lost in the news about the weather, the Inauguration and the aftermath of the tsunami. Heart disease is no longer the leading killer of Americans under age 85. Cancer is.
In fact, cancer deaths surpassed heart disease in people under 85 as far back as 1999. But until the American Cancer Society compiled its annual statistical report for this year, no one had looked before at deaths among people in this very large age group, which accounts for 98.4 percent of the population.
In 2002, the latest data fully available, 476,009 Americans younger than 85 died of cancer, while 450,637 died of heart disease. Cancer is the leading cause of death among women 40 through 79 and among men 60 through 79.
For the entire American population (that is, including the 1.6 percent who die after their 85th birthdays), heart disease remains the leading cause of death and cancer is the second, accounting for about one death in four.
What the Numbers Mean
The fact is that if the leading cause of death falls sharply, as cardiac deaths have, the second leading cause, cancer, will eventually replace it in the hierarchy of mortality.
But the story behind the newly announced statistics can help dispel many mistaken notions about cancer. It may even prompt some people, especially the young, to make life-enhancing changes that may enable them to live cancer-free beyond the age of 85.
Many people have remarked to me in recent years that "everyone" seems to have cancer, and they envision an expanding epidemic of the disease that people in this country fear most. But the facts are different: cancer death rates, too, have been falling, though not for as long or as fast as those for heart disease.
But over all, cardiac deaths have been on a rather sharp decline since 1975, whereas a fall in deaths from several leading types of cancer - like breast cancer in women and lung and prostate cancer in men - has been more gradual and did not become notable until 1990 or later.
The reasons for this disparity in mortality rates are not hard to find, and they attest to fundamental differences between the two diseases.
By far the main reason for the steep decline in cardiac deaths has been the reduction in cigarette smoking, especially among middle-aged men. Smoking is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death, and quitting smoking nearly eliminates this risk within a smoke-free year or two.
The relationship between smoking and cancer is quite different. Smoking can damage the genetic material in cells in many organs of the body. The damage is cumulative and irreversible, and evidence of it can take decades to emerge as a cancer - of the lung, larynx, mouth, bladder, pancreas, even the breast, among other organs. A person may quit smoking, but a nascent cancer will not disappear.
Another leading reason for the reduction of heart deaths is the recognition and treatment of two major cardiac risk factors, high blood pressure and elevated blood cholesterol levels. Every day, tens of millions of American men and women take drugs that lower blood pressure or cholesterol, drugs that have been shown in controlled clinical trials to reduce the chances of premature cardiac death significantly.
Preventing Cancer Deaths
It takes about 10 years of not smoking for the body to counter the damage done to lungs by cigarette smoking. Whether the risk of other smoking-related cancers also declines with time is not well-established.
Where We Are Now
Cancer is not going to go away anytime soon, though many leads, especially those involving molecular factors in cancer, are being hotly pursued both for early detection and more precise therapies.
This year in the United States, the cancer society estimates that 1,372,910 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed and 570,260 people will die from the disease. Thanks to early detection and improved treatments, however, five-year survival rates have been rising steadily, to 74 percent today from 50 percent in the 1970's.
Lung cancer, a largely preventable disease, remains the leading cancer killer in men and women, accounting for one in three cancer deaths in men and one in four in women. After several decades of rising lung cancer deaths among women, the rate has leveled off after millions of women got smart and quit smoking or chose not to start.
Click here for more information
| Home Web Page | Search This Site | Learn About ASH | Why Join ASH | Comment on This | Email This Page |