Fewer People Are Dying of Cancer Than Ever Before (theoutline.com) 210
The number of Americans dying of cancer has dropped to a 25-year low, equaling an estimated 2,143,200 fewer deaths in that period, says the new annual report from the American Cancer Society. In that time, the racial and gender disparities that exist in cancer rates have also narrowed somewhat, but they remain wide in many places. From a report on The Outline: Though the incidence of cancer remained stable for women and dropped slightly -- by 2 percent -- in men, rates remain overall 20 percent higher in men while rate of death for men is 40 percent higher than in women. The rates of both incidence and death vary wildly based on the type of cancer. The data that the ACS is using run through the end of 2014 for incidents of cancer and through 2013 for deaths. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States for both men and women..
Lung cancer (Score:3, Informative)
14% of all new cancers are lung cancers. 90% of lung cancer is due to smoking. Stop smoking.
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But is living without tobacco really living? Life is pretty dull without self-destructive behavior.
Switch to pipe smoking: it'll lower your risk of lung cancer a bit since you don't inhale (other diseases will remain). And pipe smoke is a bit less obnoxious. And a pipe looks cooler than a pack of fags.
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Nicotine is a great recreational drug and performance enhancer, but smoking/chewing/dipping is horrible for you.
Vaping is a good alternative, as long as you're willing to look a little like a goofy hipster.
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There's evidence of impact of nicotine itself on lung cell structure. There is not evidence that it is responsible for "most incidence of smoking-related cancer" he's talking out his ass... the role of other chemicals is very well documented.
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Smoke is usually bad for you, even if it's not from tobacco. Firefighters have about double the normal rate for cancer (not just lung cancer), some 60-70% of them develop cancer. (source [cdc.gov])
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Cough, cough (tee hee) don't pat yourselves on the back idiots http://www.npr.org/sections/he... [npr.org]. Americans are just dying before than can get cancer. Well done government/corporate spin, turning the ugly reality of the political dominance of a minority stealing actual life from the majority, into oh look, that parasitical minority is saving you from cancer.
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My grandfather got tumors in his tongue from smoking a pipe. He had to lose part of his tongue but was fine, then he switched to cigarettes and the lung cancer and brain tumors killed him.
But yeah, I smoke a pipe, even if it does make me look a little like a hipster or steampunk cosplayer.
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How would you know? You haven't experienced it and never will.
Re: Lung cancer (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why I don't bike to work. Choking on car exhaust for a 50 minute bike commute seems worse than 25 minutes in a car that theoretically filters some of the air (at least the larger particles). My clothes are dirty after a bike ride and I get black crud when I blow my nose, I can't imagine that is good for me.
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Choking on car exhaust for a 50 minute bike commute seems worse than 25 minutes in a car that theoretically filters some of the air (at least the larger particles).
Theoretically? My car absolutely filters most of the air that comes in, and it does it with a carbon filter, to boot. That every car does not have an activated carbon cabin air filter is a goddamned crime.
filter it out (Score:2)
This is the model [respro.com] I plan to buy within the next few weeks.
I have no affiliation with this company and I haven't tried them yet, but the research may prove fruitful for you.
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These air filters are going to come into your bedroom, pull the duvet off, kick you out of bed and chase you down the street with a bullwhip?
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Cite? Smoking seems to go hand in hand with several other health-related problems and I suspect that, as a group, the VAST majority won't live to be 77.
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The person who gave me my cancer is a chain smoker who stands a very good chance of outliving me.
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And most of the lung cancer risk associated with smoking can be mitigated with a daily vitamin C supplement.
Linus Pauling, is that you?
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lol...show me a peer reviewed study that confirms vitamin C has an effect on lung cancer. Additionally, there are many other cancers besides lung cancer (almost all of them) that smoking does a great job of setting you up for.
Smoking more, but enjoying it less? (Score:2)
Re:Smoking more, but enjoying it less? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States for both men and women." This is information that every child should learn.
"The decline in deaths from cancer is attributed largely to the fact that fewer people smoke — from about 42 percent in 1965 to 17 percent in 2013..."
And this is information we should acknowledge before believing that cancer treatments or the ACA has had some kind of massive impact on saving lives, which I'm certain this report will be abused by marketing campaigns for years to come.
Re:Smoking more, but enjoying it less? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unfortunately a lot of ideas in that regard are pure snake oil. Like anything else it gets politicized by people pushing an agenda.
Our understanding of cancer and our own bodies is pretty rudimentary. I'm not even sure it's up to the point of "we understand the depths of our ignorance" yet.
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We've also had this start to show up about 10 years ago, so I'm sure it's had some impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Anecdotally I happen to know one person for whom both the ACA and new therapies (they totally replaced his white blood cells with healthy clones) did work out.
Or in other words, "attributed largely" does not mean "attributed entirely", and it is worth the the time to know where the rest came from.
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Your white blood cells are constantly re-generated. Replacing one batch of them isn't really going to do much.
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Red cells are constantly regenerated. Not so white cells: Lymphocytes live for many years. That's why immunity is possible.
It's a routine procedure now to just every white cell plus the stem cells that make them, and transplant in a new stem cell population. Bone marrow transplant. It's still a dangerous process with a considerable mortality rate, but routine even so in cases where not using it would result in certain death anyway.
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They kill all your existing cells and transplant the cloned stems, some of which migrate to the bone marrow and become the source of future supply.
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...and yet cancer deaths are down. It must help someone.
You're just f*cked if your weak leak is your lungs.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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cancer DEATHS, not incidences of new cancer.
yes, it's quite plausible that having insurance for a few years would be the difference between dying to cancer, versus surviving it via radiation and/or chemo, or getting a transplant for a cancerous organ.
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yes, it's quite plausible that having insurance for a few years would be the difference between dying to cancer, versus surviving it via radiation and/or chemo, or getting a transplant for a cancerous organ.
Or it could be the invention and wide spread adoption of immunotherapy [wikipedia.org] in the past few years.
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Immunotherapy is still bleeding edge stuff with much of it not out of trials yet. It probably hasn't impacted survival numbers yet.
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Immunotherapy is still bleeding edge stuff with much of it not out of trials yet. It probably hasn't impacted survival numbers yet.
The FDA has been fast-tracking [fda.gov] immunotherapy drugs. Pembrolizumab [wikipedia.org] and Ipilimumab [wikipedia.org] have been approved and credited with the remarkable remission in Jimmy Carter. [go.com]
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Insensitive clod (Score:2)
I'm not!
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Ah yes, the nice sociopathic Libertarian "you have the freedom to starve" line. I love how greedy sociopaths try to philosophically justify what amounts to a big "fuck you" to the rest of society.
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By "troll" you mean call you, Heartland shill, out everytime I spot you lying.
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Your mere existence inflicts damage on someone else's life. The fact that you haven't killed yourself shows that you are a hypocrite.
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Work hard. Save money. Pay for the things that you want to pay for. Don't force someone else to pay for your stuff-- and that includes your medical treatment.
Grow wings. Learn to fly. That's roughly how likely 99.9% of the population are to ever pay for a major stay at the ICU out of pocket. So unless you want to make due totally without you need to get insurance. I like insurance when it's reasonably clear what the terms and conditions are like theft or fire. Health insurance is a horror show, it's paying money into a black hole hoping that some day you get the help you need if shit hits the fan.
But if you show any signs of actually needing that help, they'll d
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> Grow wings. Learn to fly. That's roughly how likely 99.9% of the population are to ever pay for a major stay at the ICU out of pocket.
That's why you get insurance like a responsible adult.
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The rest of the post goes on to describe the difficulties posed by a private insurance system, specifically the conflict of interest between the patient (who needs expensive treatment) and the insurance company (who wants rid of the patient, now they have become a liability).
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I believe that a chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be a universal human right. I believe libertarians are selfish and wrong for denying their fellow humans the right to live. It takes a not merely selfish but downright sadistic society to knowingly let millions of citizens die by denying them health coverage, and then turn around and ask the dying man in the street "how could you be so selfish a
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So? You want medical care as crapulent as public transportation.
I would rather have something better than that (on both counts).
I don't want to be forced to suffer over your shortsightedness and cheapness. I should be able to escape the government monopoly you would impose on either.
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That's just liberal media propaganda based on a few carefully cherry picked metrics.
I have no interest in UK or Canadian wait times.
I would rather be in the country that makes the overpriced miracle cure rather than the one that whines about how much they cost.
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Yes, there'd be a witch doctor on every corner!
Smells like? (Score:2)
"This smells like propaganda."
No, that's just your brain tumor.
Re:Propaganda? (Score:4, Informative)
"The report estimates that the Affordable Care Act is working to reduce long-standing racial disparities in cancer rates."
Has the ACA been around long enough to impact cancer rates? The law was passed in 2010 and it took quite a while to get the exchanges up and running, get people enrolled, and then get them to actually see a doctor.
I have a hard time believing that in a few short years, the ACA could have a meaningful impact on cancer rates.
This smells like propaganda.
"The decline in deaths from cancer is attributed largely to the fact that fewer people smoke — from about 42 percent in 1965 to 17 percent in 2013..."
That's because it is propaganda.
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"The decline in deaths from cancer is attributed largely to the fact that fewer people smoke — from about 42 percent in 1965 to 17 percent in 2013..."
Lung cancers are around 15% of all cancers and between 80-95% of those are caused by smoking. Smoking has gone from 25% down to 17% in the last 25 years. At the very best this would contribute to a change of a couple of percent at the most in the changing cancer death rate. Instead what we have here is a 25% change.
That is attributed to new screening methods and new treatment methods.
Stopping smoking is a good thing, but it is not what caused this change.
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The law was passed in 2010 and it took quite a while to get the exchanges up and running, get people enrolled, and then get them to actually see a doctor.
You don't have to be fully cured of cancer for your treatment to have an impact on rates of death. All the people who are currently in treatment, who otherwise wouldn't be and would have died by now (which could have been just months or weeks away when they started treatment), will be helping the numbers.
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I do think 6 years is more than enough time to have an impact. My father-in-law, who was a lifetime smoker, died 5 weeks after diagnosis. He made the choice not to go to the doctor until it was too late and the cancer had spread. I use this as an example because this may happen very often in the US as well
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Many, many cancers have high survival rates when detected early. To detect it early, people have to see their doctor regularly. If you don't have insurance,you do not ever see a doctor until you're extremely ill because you know any treatment will bankrupt you. There are now fewer people without insurance. It would be utterly absurd for cancer deaths not to have been reduced as a result.
Yes (Score:2)
This isn't hyperbole. It's one of those 'inconvenient tr
Alternative, please. [Re:Propaganda?] (Score:3)
A high deductible is better than NO insurance at all, especially when you are diagnosed with cancer. The law can be charged to require a lower deductible, but that would raise somewhere else to compensate. Democrats have not been against practical changes to ACA.
As far as general ACA criticism, I invite any conservative to propose a better alternative. All the proposals from conservatives so far either don't have any real numbers behind them, or some group or type of coverage takes a hit to help a different
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He said it in an incomplete or misleading way multiple times. The ACA had nothing in it that guaranteed people would be able to keep their existing doctors, and experts would have told you that there would likely be a fair amount of doctor shuffling. If he had said "most people can keep...", he perhaps would be off the hook.
In the minds of most people, a partial lie repeated many times has at least the same strength as a pure lie stated once. This is because a single statement has a fair chance of being a m
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People were too dumb to work out that doctors might move jobs, retire, or die ... and that's Obama's fault?
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> Too bad for you, that's a not actually plan, as you're just hand-waving it as a solution.
It's a perfect plan actually. It's not that far from other things that have been done already.
Concentrate on the problem that need fixing rather than trying to sabotage the private market and push for more socialism when the first batch of it fails.
Instead, you lot saddled private insurance customers with all of the uninsurable types that would go onto Medicare if they were older or permanently disabled. You trashe
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If you need heart surgery, kidney transplant, or have a premature birth, $10k is a drop in the bucket. You'll want that insurance so you aren't wiped out financially.
Years ago my friend lost his job while his wife was pregnant, he kept paying for insurance out of pocket through COBRA. It was extremely expensive for him, but luckily he did. He had twin babies premature and the hospital bill was over a million dollars. Everything worked out, luckily. If he didn't have insurance he would have been financially
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Voters hate the ACA, but they hate the way it was before*, and they hate the "socialized" version that most of the world has.
The majority of voters would have supported Bernie Sanders, who would have supported single payer health care. You know, that "socialized" version that most of the world has. I disagree with your fundamental premise. Voters want either insurance that works for them, or insurance companies out of health care. They don't want money taken out of their pockets by force by men with guns and handed to insurance companies, which is precisely what the ACA represents.
Re:Propaganda? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, it is. Subsidizing a for-profit company just drives the cost up for everyone, because suddenly the people who could barely afford it can easily afford it, so they can afford to pay more by a sizable percentage of the subsidy amount.
The only viable way to drive insurance costs down is through the public option that the Democrats wanted in the first place and that the Republicans forced them to bury. You'll notice that outside the third world, everybody else has socialized medicine, everybody else has cheaper medical care, and most if it is as good as (if not better than) ours. For critical services that everybody has to have to survive, nothing beats good, old-fashioned socialism. It is when socialism starts to spread into non-critical areas that countries turn into hellholes. Yet somehow, in their zeal for painting socialism as evil, the U.S. right wing has managed to create a system that is worse by preventing socialism in various areas where it is the only viable option, such as healthcare and critical infrastructure.
*sigh*
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The only viable way to drive insurance costs down is through the public option that the Democrats wanted in the first place and that the Republicans forced them to bury.
Please explain to me how this happened as not a single Republican voted for the ACA and were in the minority in both chambers. In the US Senate their numbers were so few that they couldn't even filibuster it. That giant turd of a law is owned entirely by the democrats. If you say it is because the Democrats negotiated in good faith with the Republicans then what about all the horse trading within their own party to get the fucking thing passed?
House Vote
Democrat Yes: 216
Democrat No: 34
Republican No: 1
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Basically the Republicans were no help at all, because their leadership and lobbyist horde made them tremble in their boots and stay in line, and the margin was so slim in the Senate that some of the more conservative Democrats were able exert outsized influence.
It almost went completely belly up when Scott Brown won Kennedy's old seat. Had that not happened, or had even one Republican dared to cross the isle, the law would quite possibly have been better. Two.. maybe even better than that.
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As I recall, the Democrats couldn't get it out of committee by themselves.
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Public options suck in America. All of them do.
Expanding them is really not a great option. They need to be fixed. "do-gooders" talk a good game but ultimately they don't want to actually pay for this stuff. As a result coverage and services are inferior and reimbursement rates are unsustainable.
You're a flaming hypocrite.
Dems are just left of Tories suggesting an NHS with 1/3rd the budget.
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What public option would that be? Seniors don't have a choice (you aren't allowed to buy separate insurance other than Medicare, and supplemental policies only reduce the deductible; they won't cover anything that Medicare doesn't), so they don't really have a public option because it isn't optional. And the indigent (Medicaid) also don't really have a choice; they get covered whether they want it or not. Both of those groups are some of the highest-cost gro
Well, you're half right (Score:2)
Now, just because the insurance company's costs go down doesn't mean yours will. Left alone they'll just pocket it all. That's where the public option (aka single payer) comes in.
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Fair enough; that's certainly part of the reason that costs increased, too, though I would argue that they should simply have required them to hold rates constant for a longer period than they did, at which point the initial surge in claims wouldn't have mattered as much.
Another (small) part is a general lack of competition in the marketplace—Trump was correct in saying that per-state markets for insurance lead to inadequate competition—though obviously removing that barrier won't come anywhere
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Medicaid expansion destroyed healthcare availability in some states. Doctors were forced to take it and fled. Medicaid reimbursement rates suck. They're too low to allow doctors to remain in business.
Stuff like Medicaid is where US healthcare is really embarrassing.
Cancer is a killer but (Score:2, Flamebait)
folks usually tend to die do to complications associated with Cancer, versus the disease itself.
For example, you get Cancer and go through the treatments.
The treatments absolutely destroy your immune system.
The $common_ailment shows up and kills you because your body cannot defend against it.
In trying to stave off the inevitable, we make it easier for the common cold to kick our ass.
Re:Cancer is a killer but (Score:5, Insightful)
So far as I understand it, when people get to any kind of stage 4 cancer, the causes of death are either due to metastasis (the invasion of the cancer into other tissues) or through the tumor severely impacting organs. The whole "chemo is the killer" is simply a meme invented by the alternative medicine quacks to sell you on poppy seed oil or whatever crackpottery they're trying to foist on morons today.
Yes, cancer kills you. Lung cancer, even if it doesn't spread will literally see you slowly asphyxiated as the lungs' ability to absorb oxygen degrades. The fact is that techniques like chemo (which have come a very long way in the last 25 years), radiation and surgey can prolong your life, if not outright save it, whereas 50 or 60 years ago, many cancers were simply a death sentence.
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So far as I understand it, when people get to any kind of stage 4 cancer, the causes of death are either due to metastasis (the invasion of the cancer into other tissues) or through the tumor severely impacting organs. The whole "chemo is the killer" is simply a meme invented by the alternative medicine quacks to sell you on poppy seed oil or whatever crackpottery they're trying to foist on morons today.
Yes, cancer kills you. Lung cancer, even if it doesn't spread will literally see you slowly asphyxiated as the lungs' ability to absorb oxygen degrades. The fact is that techniques like chemo (which have come a very long way in the last 25 years), radiation and surgey can prolong your life, if not outright save it, whereas 50 or 60 years ago, many cancers were simply a death sentence.
This. For the most part I'd attribute the drop in deaths from cancer to improvements in detection and general awareness of cancer. To a lesser extent, the reduction of smoking uptake rates although if you wanted to class that as "general awareness of cancer" I'd see your point.
Cancer treatments work best when cancers are detected early, the last 25 years (or more) has seen an emphasis on early detection as well as advancements in diagnosis.
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So far as I understand it, when people get to any kind of stage 4 cancer, the causes of death are either due to metastasis (the invasion of the cancer into other tissues) or through the tumor severely impacting organs. The whole "chemo is the killer" is simply a meme invented by the alternative medicine quacks to sell you on poppy seed oil or whatever crackpottery they're trying to foist on morons today.
Actually chemo is a killer. The whole point of chemo is to kill the cancer cells faster than the healthy ones. It's the biological equivalent carpet bombing. Yeah, you're going to take out some friendlies but you'll get more of bad guys.
That being said, chemo does work. Alt-quackery does not.
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And your qualifications for assessing these statistics are what exactly?
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I'll have to respectfully disagree with you here.
The last few years of life for folks with cancer is typically anything but pleasant. In and out of hospitals, in terrible health, life savings dwindling away to pay for treatments and they really look like the living dead. One parent died from complications from Breast Cancer ( lungs kept filling with fluid ), another nearly died recently due to what the chemo treatments have done to their immune system. ( Flu showed up and went into a frenzy since the bod
So you don't die of cancer... (Score:2)
You die of something else.
Other causes are now increasing their %share in the gotcha game. (which is probably a good thing since cancer seems a pretty horrible way to die- I'd rather be got by a sudden heart-attack in my sleep).
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There are three reasons why reduced cancer death rate is important.
1) Cancer is an expensive, long, painful death. Let me have a heart attack, please.
2) Cancer is the reason we age. The entire aging process is an attempt by the body to stop cells from reproducing without limit (i.e. cancer). We can't stop aging until after we cure cancer.
3) Cancer gets all the big money and press. Once we defeat it, we can put our resources into other illnesses.
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1) Lobsters do age. Their life expectancy is between 30 and 50 years in the wild. While it is true that they do not get wrinkles (shell), even during the 50 years they live, they slowly weaken. Often they lose the ability to molt.
2) Lobsters get cancer.
So the lobster says "He's right, aging is how creatures deal with cancer."
Of what are people dying now? (Score:2)
All people will die eventually.
So if fewer people are dying of cancer, it should mean that more people are dying from other causes. I've seen somewhere that Alzheimer is on the raise, maybe that's it.
In developed countries the main causes of death are roughly 1/3 cancer, 1/3 heart diseases, 1/3 others. With cancer death rates steadily increasing passed 60, it can almost be considered dying of old age.
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So if fewer people are dying of cancer, it should mean that more people are dying from other causes
Usually the figures quoted are age-adjusted death rates. So, no, death rate from cancer can go down without other (age adjusted) rates going up. What happens is that there are more older people.
Re:Of what are people dying now? (Score:4, Informative)
Cars are the number #1 killer of teens. (ages 12-19)
Cars are the number #1 killer of children. (ages 1-12)
Heart disease is the #1 killer of adults. (I couldn't find data on the age range, I assume 20+)
Congenital defects and complication of preterm birth nearly tying as the #1 killer of infants. (ages 1)
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So if fewer people are dying of cancer, it should mean that more people are dying from other causes.
Opiate overdose.
Colon cancer dropped 30% (thanks to better tech) (Score:3)
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/n... [cancer.org]
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Eat more chicken!
Weaponize Measals against Cancer (Score:2)
I wonder how much this will have to do with our new ability to use Measals to destroy some cancers.
I don't think I'd want to survive cancer (Score:2)
I can definitely see less smoking being a huge contributor to lower cancer rates. It's no surprise that lung cancer is still the most prevalent cause of cancer death though. Smokers are almost guaranteed to have expensive health issues later in life, and a shorter lifespan overall. Consider that more than half the male population and almost 30% of the female population smoked in the 50s, and in 2017 smokers in the US and many other countries are relegated to a sad little corner away from basically any publi
Lots of people survive just fine (Score:2)
Now, as an American you're probably screwed unless your independently wealthy. But we prefer to play the odds. We treat luck as a skill. Something you cultivate (often by prayin
Make Slashdot International Again (Score:2)
Could we ask that the headlines indicate when it's only in the US?
"Fewer Americans Are Dying of Cancer Than Ever Before"
Conservatives need to get busy (Score:2)
From TFA: "Although the cancer death rate remained 15% higher in blacks than in whites in 2014, increasing access to care as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) may contribute to a further narrowing of the racial gap across all population groups. In 2015, 11% of blacks and 7% of non-Hispanic whites were uninsured, compared with 21% of blacks and 12% of non-Hispanic whites in 2010. Progress for Hispanics is similar, with the uninsured rate dropping from 31% in 2010 to 1
Re:the outline is cancer (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/news/cancer-facts-and-figures-death-rate-down-25-since-1991 [cancer.org]
Re:Close that gender gap (Score:4, Funny)
My goal as a man is to live a long time. That's because men die on average younger than women. By the time I hit 100 I'll have an endless stream of women all to myself.
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That plan has proven to work if you're extremely wealthy.
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On a more serious note, the problem with letting market forces solve all our problems is that some people are not participating in the economy (market).
If you're poor, you won't be spending much money (low freedom of capital), so you have no influence over the market, the market won't react to you and your needs won't be met.
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One problem with cancer is some types are genetically identical to healthy cells, but with some differences in expression, usually expression of a previously inactive oncogene. Other types are mutations to an antioncogene (tumor suppressor gene) that stops it from functioning.
While it might be possible for a retrovirus to select based on a mutated gene, it would have to be custom made for the individual. It would take a rather specialized virus to do it, and it would have to be stable so it didn't mutate an
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How many of those who now survive don't become bankrupt in the process?
In civilized countries, with a half-decent social safety net, bankruptcy is not the penalty for surviving illness.
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How many of those who now survive don't become bankrupt in the process?
The capitalistic dick of greed will gladly fuck you over from birth to death, and not think twice about the financial pain endured.
All the more reason assisted suicide will not be legalized anytime soon. They sure as hell don't want you taking the easy way out, and before they get all your money.
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burdening the generation at its peak earning potential with caring for aging parents
Those aging parents are why you have as high an earning potential as you do now. They invented, built, and maintained the very society that did such things as preventing you from being murdered in your crib by roving bands of savages and giving you pernicious worldwide communications capabilities. Many still have wisdom to contribute even in senescence.
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The article claims that in 2017, about 600k deaths are project in the US due to cancer.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], the population of the world around 3000 BC (assuming this is roughly the Mesopotamian era) was about 14 million.
600k in a year back then would be roughly 4% of the population. This seems very unlikely. If you accept the premise that we are surrounded by carcinogens moreso today than back then, you would expect the cancer death rate to be lower back then. I would also susp
What the hell are you talking about? (Score:2)