The Medical Revolutions That Prevented Millions of Cancer Deaths (vox.com) 32
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:4, 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:4, 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...
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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:4, 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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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.
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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.
Viruses (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
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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 Papi
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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.
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)
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
Nice Chart, Vox—But What About the Other 50Y (Score:5, 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.
This CAR-T treatment initiall developed in China (Score:1)
Even better results with Medicare for All (Score:2)