Cancer: Thousands surviving in UK decades after diagnosis
Cancer Institute
The news that "more than 170,000 people in the UK who were diagnosed with cancer up to 40 years ago are still alive", is a positive step forward suggests Macmillan Cancer.[1] Apparently "people are twice as likely to survive for at least a decade after being diagnosed than they were at the start of the 1970s". This it is suggested is due to better treatments and diagnoses. The report [2] Cancer Then and Now, suggests that long-term issues are a major factor in 'survival' and I would suggest that these long-term issues may become a factor in the future.
I've previously written about the "war on cancer" [3] and the statement from Macmillan just doesn't sit well with me;
"People are now twice as likely to survive at least 10 years after being diagnosed with cancer than they were at the start of the 1970s"
For a start, the statement is referenced with the Quaresma, Coleman, and Rachet's (2015) study, in which the assessment of progress in cancer control was based upon an observational study. In "patients diagnosed in 1971-72, the index of net survival was 50% at 1 year after diagnosis. 40 years later, the same value of 50% was predicted at 10 years after diagnosis."
"Predicted 10-year net survival adjusted for age and sex for patients diagnosed between 2010 and 2011 ranged from 1·1% for pancreatic cancer to 98·2% for testicular cancer."
"Net survival for the oldest patients (75-99 years) was persistently lower than for the youngest (15-44 years), even after adjustment for the much higher mortality from causes other than cancer in elderly people."
"The very wide differences in survival for different cancers, and the persistent age gap in survival, suggest the need for renewed efforts to improve cancer outcomes."
FUNDING: Cancer Research UK.
Further into the report, they "estimate that at least 170,000 people are living with cancer who were diagnosed in the 1970s and 1980s."
Despite all these estimates, the death rates among adults seem to be steadily rising other than when you jiggle the figures and use age restandardisation, a point Ray brought up previously in his article on Breast Cancer. [5]
"Government officials, editors of the big medical journals, professors and broadcasters, have been able to get away with this huge statistical fraud. I suspect that they will soon feel encouraged to simply make up the data that they want, because eventually “age standardization” isn’t going to work to hide the actual increases in mortality. Since people with cancer usually die of something else, such as a stroke or heart failure, it will be no trick at all to make cancer mortality decline to be replaced by other causes of death. The precedent for such fabulizing of data exists in the FDA’s approval of AZT, and other less notorious drugs." - RP
Whilst I'd like to bring the news that the headline is full of bright prospects, it is seemingly a propaganda piece aimed at keeping us focused on fighting the war on cancer. To keep morale high and convince us that we are succeeding. As I've stated previously, unless mainstream science admits some huge failings, the war will continue.
[Originally published on billycraig.co.uk 01-08-2016]
References
Cancer: Thousands surviving in UK decades after diagnosis http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36925974
Macmillian Cancer Then and Now report http://www.macmillan.org.uk/documents/campaigns/cancer-then-now-report-final-online.pdf
Craig, B. War on Cancer http://www.billycraig.co.uk/blog/war-on-cancer
Quaresma M, Coleman MP, Rachet B. (2015). 40-year trends in an index of survival for all cancers combined and survival adjusted for age and sex for each cancer in England and Wales, 1971-2011: a population-based study. Lancet. 2015 Mar 28;385(9974):1206-18. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61396-9. Epub 2014 Dec http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25479696
Peat, R. Breast Cancer http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/breastcancer.shtml
