7:27 AM Study: Aging population could reverse cancer death declines |
Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) — Deaths from cancer have dropped by more than a million in the past two decades, driven by science that opened new ways to prevent, detect and treat the disease, according to a report by researchers. An aging population could change that trend. Almost 14 million people alive in the U.S. today are cancer survivors, according to the American Association for Cancer Research’s Cancer Progress Report 2013. The AACR, the world’s largest cancer research organization, also warns that continued funding for research is crucial as worldwide rates of cancer are expected to rise to 22.2 million patients in 2030 from 12.8 million in 2008, they said. "There’s going to be an increasing number of cancers because the population is aging,” said Giuseppe Giaccone, an associate director for clinical research at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, in a Sept. 16 telephone interview. "There really should be continued support for research in cancer. This is the only way you can get continued results in the future. To do this kind of research is expensive but there’s no other way.” Cancer is the No. 2 killer in the U.S. behind cardiovascular disease. This year, more than 580,000 people are expected to die and another 1.6 million Americans will be diagnosed with the disease, the authors said. The majority of those diagnosed with the disease are ages 55 and older. CANCER INVESTMENTInvestments in cancer research have resulted in cutting the rate of many of the more than 200 types of cancers and better quality of life and longer lives for people whose malignancies can’t be prevented or cured, the authors wrote. For instance, survival rates for breast cancer for women and acute lymphocytic leukemia for children have increased to 90 percent or more since the mid-1970s, they said. The National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is one of many federal agencies that fund cancer research along with state and local governments, voluntary organizations, private institutes and corporations. The agency’s fiscal-year 2013 budget was $4.8 billion, down $293 million from fiscal-year 2012 mainly on U.S. spending cuts called sequestration, according to its website. In fiscal year 2012, the latest year data is available, the cancer institute spent about $5 billion on cancer research. Cancers of the breast, colon, lung and prostate garnered the most funding, the agency said. |
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