Cancer Myth #1

Sunday, 06 November 2011 10:09

We are winning the battle with cancer, and survival rates are much better today than in the past. Cancer has become AN EPIDEMIC... effecting massive numbers of people in all social and economic groups. It is now the 2nd leading cause of death in North America, Australia and the UK. Death from cancer is exceeded only by heart disease.

The American Cancer Society says that 1 in 2 of all men and 1 in 3 of all women in our country today will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime. This is a massive increase over the 1 person in 80 who contracted cancer 100 years ago. Due to the huge numbers of people dying in the USA from all degenerative diseases, not just cancer, life expectancy is being revised downward for the first time ever by medical researchers. According to the NEJM report, studies suggest that two-thirds of American adults are overweight. One study cited by the authors indicates that the prevalence of obesity in U.S. adults has increased about 50 percent per decade since 1980.

Additional research has shown that people who are severely obese live up to 20 years less than people who are not overweight and are much more prone to contracting cancer. Some researchers have estimated that obesity causes about 300,000 premature deaths in the U.S. annually. In addition, obesity is fueling an epidemic of type 2 diabetes, which also reduces lifespan and is the cause of many debilitating diseases and blindness. Life expectancy in the USA is now at a high of 77.6 years. If the researchers' predictions hold true in the next 50 years, it would be the first reversal in life expectancy since the government started keeping track in 1900.

This year, about 1,200,000 new cancer cases will be diagnosed in the USA alone, with hundreds of thousands more in the UK and in Australia and other Western countries. When added to the millions who already have cancer, the anticipated loss of life easily exceeds 1,000,000 per year. (Over 1,500 people in the U.S. alone die every day from cancer.) In spite of massive investments in research, cancer rates are increasing markedly among all age groups, including children, whose rate of increase is nearly 1% per year according to the American Cancer Institute. In some parts of the world, cancer already affects 1 in every 2 people, and the trend continues to get worse. Eventually the rate could approach 100% Although small improvements have occurred in treating some cancers, the overall rate of recovery for cancer patients has changed very little over the past 50 years. The average cancer survival rate was about 50% in 1950, and it is still about 50% today. For African-Americans, the survival rate in 1950 was under 40%, and it also remains about the same today.