The American Association for Cancer Research published a report on Wednesday saying in the United States, cancer death rates have continued to decline, thanks to new treatments and improved screening of patients.
The number of cancer-related deaths has been slowly decreasing over the past two decades, with a particularly sharp movement in recent years. The group's annual Cancer Progress report showed that there are now more than 18 million cancer survivors in the US, up from only 3 million in 1971.
Declining Cancer Death Rates
The senior deputy director for the Midwest at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. Stephen Ansell, said that this is a really exciting time in cancer management. She noted that the death rate from cancer continues to go down year after year.
United States President Joe Biden also relaunched his 'Cancer Moonshot' initiative this year, outlining new steps to expand on the program. The initiative aims to expand funding for cancer research, especially immunotherapies.
The president of the American Association for Cancer Research, Dr. Lisa Coussens said, "You can't stop funding basic science now with the belief that the current treatments will be good enough. Investing in basic science has a huge payoff to the public, as per NBC News.
Coussens highlighted the growing use of immunotherapies as an example of how cancer treatments have improved in recent years. She said that people's ability to use or leverage the power of the human immune system to fight cancer is a crucial thing. She added that is why there are more significant survival rates in many cancer patients, such as patients with lung and kidney cancers and melanoma.
While cancer cells are mavericks, they are still a person's own cells, and a human being's immune system was not designed to attack its own cells. The medical director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, Dr. Larry Norton said that new drugs allow an indivisual's immune system to attack its own cancer cells.
According to CNN, the findings of the report come as for all cancers combined, the five-year overall survival rate has increased from 49% in the mid-1970s to nearly 70% from 2011 to 2017, which is the most recent data available.
Funding For Cancer Treatment Research
Furthermore, the overall cancer death rate, adjusted for age, continues to drop, with reductions from 1991 to 2019 equating to about 3.5 million deaths avoided, said the association. The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2022 noted that declines in smoking and improvements in catching and treating cancer early on are driving the change.
Coussens added that basic research discoveries have driven the remarkable advances that are being observed in cancer medicine in recent years. She noted that targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and other new therapeutic approaches being applied clinically all stem from fundamental discoveries in basic science.
Coussens argued that investment in cancer science, particularly support for science education at all levels, is absolutely essential in driving the next wave of discoveries and accelerating progress, WebMD reported.
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