Cancer Deaths Continue to Decline, Scientists Say
Cancer deaths and the rate of new cases are continuing their encouraging downward trend--in part the result of American adults quitting smoking--but federal health officials on Tuesday warned that lung cancer rates are likely to jump again unless smoking among adolescents is curbed.
The annual report to the nation on cancer, released Tuesday by the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that deaths and incidence of all cancers combined fell from 1990 to 1996, the most recent figures available.
“One year does not a trend make, but we have now been seeing this over several years--a sustained and significant downturn in both incidence and deaths,” said Dr. John R. Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society. “Given the fact that this is the first time this has been observed in the 20th century, there is reason to be upbeat.
“Cancer has gone from being a virtual death sentence to now being the most curable and most preventable of the major chronic killer diseases,” he added.
After increasing from 1973 to 1990, incidence rates for all cancers combined leveled off and, after 1992, began falling at an average annual rate of 2.2% through 1996.
Men See Great Declines in New Cases
The greatest declines in new cases by far occurred among men, who overall have higher cancer rates than women. Racial and ethnic disparities continued, however, suggesting that African Americans and other groups have benefited less from prevention and control efforts, perhaps due to later diagnosis and barriers to health care access, the report said.
Lung cancer rates historically have influenced overall cancer trends, health officials said.
About 90% of all lung cancer is the result of tobacco use, including cigarettes, pipes, cigars and exposure to secondhand smoke.
Smoking among adults has dropped dramatically during the last 25 years, although the trend has stalled in the last four or five years, health officials said.
New cases and deaths from lung cancer--which causes 28% of all cancer deaths annually, more than any other--continued to drop among men and rise among women. But the rate of increase among women has slowed in recent years, raising the possibility that lung cancer increases among women will turn around, much as they did for men.
The statistics reflect the smoking behavior of the genders; men started smoking and quit smoking earlier than women; the numbers have not yet begun to show the impact of decreases in smoking among women.
“We would expect to see the same favorable downturn” among women as men, Seffrin said.
Lung Cancer Taking Toll on Women
But Diane Blum, executive director of Cancer Care Inc., a support organization for cancer patients, said that lung cancer is becoming “increasingly a women’s disease,” and complained that, despite the overall encouraging trends, “women with lung cancer have been left behind.”
The real worry, however, continues to be teenagers, who in the 1990s have increasingly taken up the habit.
More than 1.2 million Americans younger than 18 started smoking in 1996, up from 708,000 in 1988, according to numbers released last fall by the CDC.
“Unless we invest now in anti-tobacco efforts aimed at our youngest citizens, we will . . . lose yet another generation,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
In addition to lung cancer, cancer of the prostate, breast and colon accounted for more than half of all new cancer cases, and were the leading causes of cancer deaths, the report said.
Prostate cancer incidence and deaths are declining, the report said; new cases of breast cancer have changed little during the 1990s, while death rates have been declining by about 2% per year since 1990.
Colorectal cancer incidence and death rates continued to decline among both men and women, the report said.
