It's not very often that the press reports good news. So, I'm giving credit where credit is due. Reuters is reporting today that death rates from cancer (in the United States) are continuing to fall compared to previous studies.
They found important declines in deaths from lung, prostate and colorectal cancers in men, as well as in breast and colon cancer among women. Lung cancer deaths were still on the rise among women but this increase slowed, according to the report.This is definitely great news. A lot of work from a lot of different people and a variety of different organizations helped make this possible.The annual decline in cancer death rates from 2002 to 2004 was nearly twice the decrease of 1.1 percent per year from 1993 through 2002.
What will be interesting to watch now is these different organizations - whether they be government agencies, private sector research firms, patient advocate organizations, or others - take credit for this work (which they should) and fight for government budget dollars, private foundation dollars, and your public donation dollars (you can already see this at the end of this Reuters article). Let the games begin!