
The Medical Revolutions That Prevented Millions of Cancer Deaths (vox.com) 76
Vox publishes a story about "the quiet revolutions that have prevented millions of cancer deaths....
"The age-adjusted death rate in the US for cancer has declined by about a third since 1991, meaning people of a given age have about a third lower risk of dying from cancer than people of the same age more than three decades ago... " The dramatic bend in the curve of cancer deaths didn't happen by accident — it's the compound interest of three revolutions. While anti-smoking policy has been the single biggest lifesaver, other interventions have helped reduce people's cancer risk. One of the biggest successes is the HPV vaccine. A study last year found that death rates of cervical cancer — which can be caused by HPV infections — in US women ages 20-39 had dropped 62 percent from 2012 to 2021, thanks largely to the spread of the vaccine. Other cancers have been linked to infections, and there is strong research indicating that vaccination can have positive effects on reducing cancer incidence.
The next revolution is better and earlier screening. It's generally true that the earlier cancer is caught, the better the chances of survival... According to one study, incidences of late-stage colorectal cancer in Americans over 50 declined by a third between 2000 and 2010 in large part because rates of colonoscopies almost tripled in that same time period. And newer screening methods, often employing AI or using blood-based tests, could make preliminary screening simpler, less invasive and therefore more readily available. If 20th-century screening was about finding physical evidence of something wrong — the lump in the breast — 21st-century screening aims to find cancer before symptoms even arise.
Most exciting of all are frontier developments in treating cancer... From drugs like lenalidomide and bortezomib in the 2000s, which helped double median myeloma survival, to the spread of monoclonal antibodies, real breakthroughs in treatments have meaningfully extended people's lives — not just by months, but years. Perhaps the most promising development is CAR-T therapy, a form of immunotherapy. Rather than attempting to kill the cancer directly, immunotherapies turn a patient's own T-cells into guided missiles. In a recent study of 97 patients with multiple myeloma, many of whom were facing hospice care, a third of those who received CAR-T therapy had no detectable cancer five years later. It was the kind of result that doctors rarely see.
The article begins with some recent quotes from Jon Gluck, who was told after a cancer diagnosis that he had as little as 18 months left to live — 22 years ago...
"The age-adjusted death rate in the US for cancer has declined by about a third since 1991, meaning people of a given age have about a third lower risk of dying from cancer than people of the same age more than three decades ago... " The dramatic bend in the curve of cancer deaths didn't happen by accident — it's the compound interest of three revolutions. While anti-smoking policy has been the single biggest lifesaver, other interventions have helped reduce people's cancer risk. One of the biggest successes is the HPV vaccine. A study last year found that death rates of cervical cancer — which can be caused by HPV infections — in US women ages 20-39 had dropped 62 percent from 2012 to 2021, thanks largely to the spread of the vaccine. Other cancers have been linked to infections, and there is strong research indicating that vaccination can have positive effects on reducing cancer incidence.
The next revolution is better and earlier screening. It's generally true that the earlier cancer is caught, the better the chances of survival... According to one study, incidences of late-stage colorectal cancer in Americans over 50 declined by a third between 2000 and 2010 in large part because rates of colonoscopies almost tripled in that same time period. And newer screening methods, often employing AI or using blood-based tests, could make preliminary screening simpler, less invasive and therefore more readily available. If 20th-century screening was about finding physical evidence of something wrong — the lump in the breast — 21st-century screening aims to find cancer before symptoms even arise.
Most exciting of all are frontier developments in treating cancer... From drugs like lenalidomide and bortezomib in the 2000s, which helped double median myeloma survival, to the spread of monoclonal antibodies, real breakthroughs in treatments have meaningfully extended people's lives — not just by months, but years. Perhaps the most promising development is CAR-T therapy, a form of immunotherapy. Rather than attempting to kill the cancer directly, immunotherapies turn a patient's own T-cells into guided missiles. In a recent study of 97 patients with multiple myeloma, many of whom were facing hospice care, a third of those who received CAR-T therapy had no detectable cancer five years later. It was the kind of result that doctors rarely see.
The article begins with some recent quotes from Jon Gluck, who was told after a cancer diagnosis that he had as little as 18 months left to live — 22 years ago...
Re:Statistical statistical (Score:5, Insightful)
Also more evidence that vaccines work. By reducing the cases of HPV, we've also reduced complications caused by the disease. And all we've had to suffer was a little aut... checks notes... hmmm, nothing it seems.
Re:Statistical statistical (Score:5, Informative)
Sure wish the HPV vaccine had been available when I was the appropriate age. It would have saved me months of horrible, horrible chemo and radiation now. And we don't yet know if it was successful!
Re: Statistical statistical (Score:2)
Absolutely same with me. I plea ro every parent I meet to vaccinate their children if they don't want them to suffer horribly from a totally preventable disease.
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Re: Statistical statistical (Score:2)
I just wish they weren't so caught up in making sure that women got it that they wouldn't allow men to have it for the most part until recently. Because men never spread it apparently?
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I just wish they weren't so caught up in making sure that women got it that they wouldn't allow men to have it for the most part until recently. Because men never spread it apparently?
We both know why that is. It is much easier to sell as something to protect women. In some countries in Africa, where Aids is still a big problem, the programs are all aimed at women.
https://au.int/sites/default/f... [au.int] It's tone deafness. And it shows that men are considered expendable, and it "empowers" women somehow. as the big caps in the introduction state:
"WOMEN BEAR THE BRUNT OF HIV/AIDS IN AFRICA"
Maybe it is the troubleshooter in me, but if I was to try to eliminate a disease, I would never o
Re:Statistical statistical (Score:5, Interesting)
Now we just have the problem of parents blocking the vaccine because they claim it promotes promiscuity. A huge number of parents do not want their daughters getting the vaccine at age 12-18 because they just can't admit that their daughters might have sex in that range. I don't know how we get past that mental block.
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I love how they think that "you might get cancer sometime in the future" would be a deterrent in the moment for anybody...
Re:Statistical statistical (Score:5, Insightful)
Having sex before marriage is somehow worse than cancer. Seems about right for the American Taliban.
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Sex outside of marriage clearly leads to the spread of quite a lot of disease, that sometimes leads to more severe disease like cancer and obviously all kinds of other societal harm.
Maybe instead of being cute and flip you should realize Archie that your free-love boomer bullshit has been bad for our society and individuals a like.
Re: Statistical statistical (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should face reality: after a millennium of taboos and harsh punishments on sex outside of marriage, no church has ever been able to get people to stop having sex before marriage, or during marriage.
They did manage to make a lot of people miserable for centuries, give people weird distorted views of the human body, and human biology, and killed a few million people in the process to prove a point.
Maybe just prevent disease? That seems to work out a lot better so far.
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Maybe you should face reality: after a millennium of taboos and harsh punishments on sex outside of marriage, no church has ever been able to get people to stop having sex before marriage, or during marriage.
They did manage to make a lot of people miserable for centuries, give people weird distorted views of the human body, and human biology, and killed a few million people in the process to prove a point.
Maybe just prevent disease? That seems to work out a lot better so far.
Oh, and it is nothing short of hilarious that some people believe that everyone was chaste and pure until the boomers came along.
Doing a bit of genealogy work, I was a but surprised to find some of these dates didn't match up. Some of these people were born only a few months after marriage. On my father's side of the family, every single woman chose a man, then proceeded to bang him until they became pregnant. My mother baby trapped my father. A couple of the ladies had children with someone else they d
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Abortions were illegal, but not a dilation and curettage (D&C)
Oh. Now I realize why you never hear about D&C anymore. Seems at one time it was a lot more common.
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Abortions were illegal, but not a dilation and curettage (D&C)
Oh. Now I realize why you never hear about D&C anymore. Seems at one time it was a lot more common.
Exactly.
I remember as a kid that a lot of women seemed to have "women's problems" quite frequently as they were called back then. A trip to hospital, an overnight stay, and right back on their feet as if nothing happened. A miracle cure! I even knew Catholic women who had those problems.
Then after Roe v Wade, they kinda mysteriously disappeared.
There really isn't that much difference in people. Young people always think they invented sex, older people who once thought they invented sex then become
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They did manage to make a lot of people miserable for centuries, give people weird distorted views of the human body, and human biology, and killed a few million people in the process to prove a point.
What are you talking about?
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Sex outside of marriage clearly leads to the spread of quite a lot of disease, that sometimes leads to more severe disease like cancer and obviously all kinds of other societal harm.
Grandpa, aren't you a member of the party of personal responsibility?
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Ignorant trolls are out in force today.
Re: Statistical statistical (Score:2)
"Sex outside of marriage clearly leads to the spread of quite a lot of disease"
So does sex inside of marriage, when people are too brainwashed to get tested because they think only dirty people do that, and don't recognize the symptoms of their STDs because they were taught that knowing things about their body is bad. You denialists are responsible for that.
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Sex outside of marriage clearly leads to the spread of quite a lot of disease, that sometimes leads to more severe disease like cancer and obviously all kinds of other societal harm.
Maybe instead of being cute and flip you should realize Archie that your free-love boomer bullshit has been bad for our society and individuals a like.
Yeah - the Boomers are now responsible for teenage promiscuity? That's a new one.
It is kind of sad that the present generations would remain chaste virgins until marriage except for the span of satan boomers. And if they come back to follow the scriptures, and follow God follow , they will engage in the carnal acts only for having children, nothing else. And pray for forgiveness if they lewdly enjoy it.
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If Boomers are responsible for teenage promiscuity, we may have to give them credit for a lot more things, such as sunlight and gravity. If they were able to reorder the world that much, there's no telling what they did with their powers before we were born!
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If Boomers are responsible for teenage promiscuity, we may have to give them credit for a lot more things, such as sunlight and gravity. If they were able to reorder the world that much, there's no telling what they did with their powers before we were born!
Yes. And if young people actually think as they do, is it wise to speak ill of such powerful creatures?
Re: Statistical statistical (Score:2)
Perhaps their energies have waned with time? Three wishes on the lamp, that sort of thing? Still, you are right to suggest caution until we know. :-)
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It's bad for individuals, clearly. For species biology, it has been incredibly positive, which accounts for the incredible drive in young humans to copulate widely (the more diverse the pairings, the broader the genetic spread, which reproduces more of that genome into the next generation). Whether or not it is good for society is an open question with a lot of varying data. Planned children is clearly a positive -- but with modern birth control and abortion access, that's less of a gain. The extraordinary
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Sex outside of marriage clearly leads to the spread of quite a lot of disease
You don't even need to have sex. You just need to kiss, or ... look longingly in each others eyes or something, and there are plenty of viruses, bacteria, and diseases you can pick up that way.
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Here's a crazy idea, but maybe 12 year old girls shouldn't be having sex.
I'm assuming you're either trolling or a bot, because I don't think a human with the brainpower to keep breathing could have missed the point so completely. The point is that the HPV vaccine has absolutely zero effect on whether those girls are going to be sexually active or not. Tangentially, neither does abstinence-only sex education according to every study ever conducted.
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Here's a crazy idea, but maybe 12 year old girls shouldn't be having sex.
I'm assuming you're either trolling or a bot, because I don't think a human with the brainpower to keep breathing could have missed the point so completely. The point is that the HPV vaccine has absolutely zero effect on whether those girls are going to be sexually active or not. Tangentially, neither does abstinence-only sex education according to every study ever conducted.
He's just expressing his opinion. But to the topic, no - HPV vaccines don't encourage promiscuity. Indeed, they should really be given as early as possible, because girls "experiment" early.
And all I can figure about abstinence only programs is a fair number of young ladies end up being "technical virgins" as they - what is the polite way to put this - invite guys in through the backdoor?
Re: Statistical statistical (Score:2)
" Who thinks promiscuity brings women happiness? It doesn't. It's empty. Too many men permanently damages a woman's ability to pair bond. "
God damn you're a worthless troll.
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BREAKING: Team Trump announces new law that will require students and their parents to affirm "Jesus is Lord."
If you like that, you'll love this. [theonion.com]
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Here's a crazy idea, but maybe 12 year old girls shouldn't be having sex.
While I agree with most of your post, especially the part about promiscuous women having great difficulty pair bonding, where we get into trouble is that we are fighting against nature.
The problem is that humans when invented teenagers - it was a good thing, no doubt. we don't need or want people that young to reproduce any more.
But people are ready to reproduce at an early age - when they hit puberty. We try to stop them, but it can't be done completely. Girls in my class might go to live with relativ
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Here is the problem: for the vaccine to be effective, you have to give it *before* they are sexually active. So, what age are you proposing giving it to then? I would at this juncture note that under "Romeo and Juliet" laws nine states in the USA have a legal age of consent of 13, and ten states have an age of consent of 14, and in three states it is 15.
When I was growing up 12 was the age that the girls got the Rubella vaccine to prevent birth defects from German Measles in any children they had. Nobody wa
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I never said they should be having sex. I said they frequently do have sex despite best parental efforts. A good parent has contingency plans in place in case their best efforts fail. It doesn't matter whether you think the sex is a good idea or not, the vaccine for HPV is still a good idea! Just because they've been vaccinated does not change whether or not they're going to have sex.
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Now we just have the problem of parents blocking the vaccine because they claim it promotes promiscuity. A huge number of parents do not want their daughters getting the vaccine at age 12-18 because they just can't admit that their daughters might have sex in that range. I don't know how we get past that mental block.
And that is just plain nuts. And BTW, girls in that age are already "experimenting" with sex.
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You and Jodi Ernst are in the same boat.
Don't even try to stay healthy because you'll just die anyway.
The level of stupidity is impressive.
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You and Jodi Ernst are in the same boat. Don't even try to stay healthy because you'll just die anyway. The level of stupidity is impressive.
I write these things to trigger some people, and by golly, you iz triggered! Or at least to jar them with something they seem to forget.
Was anything I wrote not factual? Explain.
What is amazing is I spit out fact, you make up something that you somehow, someway think I wrote, then call me stupid. Well played homie. I'll bet you believe 2+2 =5, at least for large values of 2.
I look forward to see what you make up for me to say next. Please do not disappoint!
Here comes another one. Did you know the
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Your logic is odd and difficult to parse so I won't even try.
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Given that no one gets out of here alive...
All you do is increase your chances of dying from something else if you lessen the chances of dying from one particular thing.
That's a valid point: everybody dies from something eventually; if people don't die from cancer, they'll die from something else. Ideally, they'll die from something else later. (And not from sheer neglect.)
This is a quibble I have with the stated goal of the Biden Adminstration's Cancer Moonshot [archives.gov]: "to cut the cancer death rate by at least half by 2047". There's a very simple way to do that: just kill everybody before they get cancer. That's what Logan's Run [wikipedia.org] was about, wasn't it? Obviously that wasn't wh
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Given that no one gets out of here alive... All you do is increase your chances of dying from something else if you lessen the chances of dying from one particular thing.
That's a valid point: everybody dies from something eventually; if people don't die from cancer, they'll die from something else. Ideally, they'll die from something else later. (And not from sheer neglect.)
This is a quibble I have with the stated goal of the Biden Adminstration's Cancer Moonshot [archives.gov]: "to cut the cancer death rate by at least half by 2047". There's a very simple way to do that: just kill everybody before they get cancer. That's what Logan's Run [wikipedia.org] was about, wasn't it? Obviously that wasn't what they meant.
I would have preferred something like "extending quality-adjusted life-years", but I'm sure that's kind of what they intended.
It sounds like a worthy goal. But I think even that administration understood a little about statistics.
I'll bet most normal people would be 100 percent behind a program that stated "We will decrease all death rates to 0." Despite it being utterly impossible.
Re:Viruses (Score:4, Informative)
>> Stunning admission by the establishment
Where did you see that? "cervical cancer â" which can be caused by HPV infections" isn't stunning.
Re:Viruses (Score:4, Insightful)
Cancer is not one single disease, it's just a catch all term for a disease associated with uncontrolled cell growth, they all have different causatives.
Can we please not make this more political than it has to be by dragging it into the "establishment vs anti-establishment", if those researchers you mention are scientists doing proper science within the field then they are "the establishment" just the same.
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Cancer is like pneumonia--it isn't a single disease with a single cause, it's a symptom, with a whole range of causes.
Re:Viruses (Score:4, Informative)
You make it sound like "certain viruses can cause cancer" is hidden knowledge that is being actively suppressed by 'the establishment' for some nefarious reason.
The first virus found to cause cancer was Rous Sarcoma virus in 1911 [nih.gov], in chicken. Since then, several cancer inducing viruses (oncoviruses [nih.gov]) have been discovered.
They are all covered in virology textbooks. If you have the time, watch the Virology course of Dr. Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University [youtube.com]. It is well covered there.
Viruses like Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer in women. Others like Hepatitis B and C cause liver cancer. Other common ones are Kaposi sarcoma, HIV, and Epstein-Barr.
All in all, viruses cause around 12% of cancer cases [nih.gov]. So they are just one factor, not THE only factor.
There is no conspiracy here.
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There is no conspiracy here.
There is no obvious conspiracy ... yet. Give RFKjr a few more years combined with Trump kicking out and muzzling all the government scientists plus the scientists who used to receive government grants. I suppose some might require a conspiracy to be secret, but there are definitions, including legal definitions, that don't require secrecy.
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HPV causes more than just Cervical cancer in women. To the point in the UK we are giving 12-year-old boys the HPV vaccine too, as NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) concluded that it was cost-effective to do so due to it reducing a number of other cancers.
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Found an article:
https://www.mdanderson.org/pub... [mdanderson.org]
Admittedly anecdotal... (Score:3, Informative)
...but the freaking doctors that did my colonoscopies over the last year did a job they *could* have done in a single procedure in three separate procedures in part because the insurance companies changed guidelines for how much anesthetic can be given for a single procedure. In other words, doing it in 3 was the only way they could keep me from waking up in the middle of it, and there was no *medically* necessitated reason for that. Like I said, anecdotal, but if it is in any way typical, those statistics on the number of those procedures may be skewed.
Smoking (Score:1)
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We have already seen deaths from complications due to vaping in the UK. So it is probably less dangerous that smoking but it is absolutely not risk free.
Re: Smoking (Score:2)
Multiple myeloma (Score:2)
My 67y dad was (almost accidentally - he was being scanned for something else) diagnosed with an advanced stage of multiple myeloma in 2003 and was given a single-digit% chance to live, at most 6 mos.
Figuring he had little to lose, he signed up for experimental stem-cell replacement therapy at the U of MN hospital which was expected to increase his lifespan from 6mo to 2-3yr.
It was arduous but by 2006 he was pronounced *entirely cancer free* living another 12 years before finally succumbing to pneumonia (mo
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My 67y dad was (almost accidentally - he was being scanned for something else) diagnosed with an advanced stage of multiple myeloma in 2003 and was given a single-digit% chance to live, at most 6 mos. Figuring he had little to lose, he signed up for experimental stem-cell replacement therapy at the U of MN hospital which was expected to increase his lifespan from 6mo to 2-3yr.
It was arduous but by 2006 he was pronounced *entirely cancer free* living another 12 years before finally succumbing to pneumonia (more or less the result of a severe stroke a few years before).
As I see, today that same condition/age I see survival rates now north of 60%.
Advances in cancer treatments have really been remarkable.
I'm thinking you mean a bone marrow transplant. (Which is a form of stem cell transplant.) Admittedly when my dad was dying of renal cell carcinoma around the same time, I was reading there was an experimental program to treat that with a bone marrow transplant as well. The results of that were pretty much 20% of the time it cured it, 60% of the time it did nothing and 20% of the time it killed the patient in about 2 weeks. Admittedly we didn't go any further looking into it. (Hopefully the odds a better th
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Yep, that's correct. And yeah, that's about what we were told, although I don't recall the 'x% death sooner' - my dad could have kept that to himself. I recall being told they thought it would have a 1/3 chance of extending his life to a handful of years. We were extraordinarily fortunate.
Nice Chart, Vox—But What About the Other 50Y (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, I’m thrilled Vox can read an SEER plot and notice that smoking, screening, and HPV vaccines matter (slow clap). But before we crown Big Tobacco lawsuits and Gardasil as the sole saviors of humankind, can we maybe glance at, oh, the last half-century of environmental regulation?
What about the asbestos bans that cratered mesothelioma in post’70s construction cohorts? 84% risk reduction -- ring a bell? What about Chile and Taiwan slashing arsenic in drinking water and watching bladder and lungcancer mortality do a Wile E.Coyote cliff plunge two decades later? Or the Mercury & AirToxics Standards that took nickel, chromium, and friends down by 80% -- something the EPA’s own Section 812 analysis credits with thousands of avoided cancer deaths?
But sure, let’s keep peddling the tidy narrative that medical tech alone bent the mortality curve. Those radon-mitigation building codes? Irrelevant. Beryllium and benzene exposure limits? Yawn. Apparently if the benefit isn’t measured in ninefigure pharma revenue or a primetime Super Bowl ad, it doesn’t make the Vox word count.
Pro-tip: pathology doesn’t care whether the carcinogen came from Marlboro Country or your municipal tap. Policy matters, and not just the ones that poll well on Twitter.
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It's even there in the "Most of exciting of all" phrasing, describing frontier tech.
None of that tech is as exciting as public health and prevention, in my view. So I fully agree with you on the importance of environmental regs that have driven down prevalence rates for key cancers.
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All those are medical revolutions you twerp.
Even better results with Medicare for All (Score:2)
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Well taking the UK as an example the survival rates for cancer are on average better. In fact all health outcomes are better on average. If you are in the top 5% of wealth in the USA then your do better than the average in the UK, but still worse than the top 5% of wealth in the UK. However you can't have single payer healthcare in the USA because it is "communist"