CANCER

Cancer is killing more people than ever before

Everyone knows someone affected by cancer, friends, relatives, the family next door. Everywhere people are dying from, or awaiting treatment for, the dreaded Big C. Everywhere, people speculate about the reason for the sudden rise in the number of cancer victims. Everywhere, the medical profession and drug companies are being criticised for failing to halt the rising rates of cancer, and are even accused of conspiracies and cover-ups that are allowing innocent people to die while they profit from the misery. More people, in desperation or from lack of trust, are turning to alternate healers and natural remedies.

Some people attribute rising cancer rates to lower standards of living, the pressure of modern-day life, climate change, pollution, insecticides, food ingredients, secret government missions to aerial spray populations with toxic chemicals, and so on. It seems that almost everyone has an explanation for the prevalence of the dreaded disease that is now one of the world’s biggest killers.

So what is the real truth about cancer? The answer lies in history, authentic research, and facts about the medical profession, changing life expectancy, and changing causes of death.

History reveals that humans are living longer now than ever before, and that the increased life expectancy is more universal than ever before. In the Neolithic Period (later Stone Age ending 10,000 years ago) the worldwide life expectancy from birth was just 20 years.  By the time of the Bronze Age (6,000 years ago) man could expect to live for 26 years on average from birth. In early modern England (1500-1700) Brits were doing better than many others around the world with a life expectancy 0f 37 years. By 1900, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the world life expectancy had reached 31 years. By 1950 it had risen to 48, and to 67 years in 2010.

From the above it could be expected that fewer people would be dying from a particular cause, such as cancer, rather than more, but that is not the case. More people are dying from cancer now than ever before. So let’s look at the causes of death and how they have changed over time.

From the earliest times until quite recently, infant mortality was one of the major causes of death. As recently as 1700 a third of all births worldwide led to death before the age of nine, due to malnutrition, disease, accidents and violence. This had a major impact on life expectancy in general.

The gap between rich and poor has always created an unequal life expectancy, both between rich and poor countries and between rich and poor families living in the same countries, and even in the same cities. Poverty comes with a high price. However, the Industrial Revolution changed the thinking of business leaders, politicians and social reformers to the extent that it was realized that if the masses were unable to purchase the goods that they produced, there wasn’t much point in having industry because there would be a scarcity of customers with money. While there is still a considerable gap between rich and poor, the gap is closing rather than widening as is popularly believed. The progressive closing of the gap is a major factor in increasing life expectancy.

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Medical science in the 20^th and 21^st centuries has made huge progress at a pace not unlike the progress of aviation and space exploration. The remedies and cures of 200 years ago often killed more patients than they saved. Surgery more often than not resulted in fatal infections of which there was no understanding. The discovery of germs is relatively recent.

Because of the advance of medical science and improved living standards, many common killers have been eliminated completely or are now extremely rare. Examples include smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid, and diphtheria. Other diseases such as influenza, which killed an estimated 50 million in 1919-20, are now of a much lower incidence rate and are now rarely fatal. Improved hygiene, better housing and working conditions have also played a vital role in life expectancy.

We constantly hear criticism of peoples eating habits, but with freer trade and comparative economic security, more people are able to enjoy a more nutritional diet than at any other time in history. Even Alaskans now have access to bananas, and ice cream and refrigeration are available in the tropics. Life is good.

A study of war statistics for the last thousand years even shows a progressive decrease in the numbers killed as a result of war. The decrease has accelerated over the last 70 years since the end of WWII which killed 55 million. Fewer people, particularly young servicemen, are dying because of wars, and therefore getting a shot at old age.

Here’s a couple more things that are letting people live longer: Smoking is literally a dying habit with more and more people stopping smoking. Alcohol consumption is more controlled and responsible than in some previous centuries, when alcoholic addiction and drunkenness was the norm for millions of people, including those who could ill-afford it.

So, you may ask, what has all this got to do with cancer? Well, it’s pretty simple. Although cancer can kill the very young, it is primarily a disease of the elderly and it is proving one of the most difficult diseases to eliminate. Fortunately, only about 1% of deaths from cancer involve those aged under 15. In other words, the longer we live the more likely we are to have to face it. Many of the earlier big killers have been eliminated and that has opened the way for cancer later in life.

It is expected that as life expectancy increases, reported cancer cases will increase, possibly by up to 70% over the next 20 years. But an increasing proportion of those reported cases will survive into remission. The survival rate for some cancers is better than for others with high survival rates for breast, prostate and colon cancers. Meanwhile, pancreatic cancers have a much lower survival rate.

The essential fact about cancer is that there is more cancer in the world today, because we are able to avoid many of the things that previously would have killed us, and that leaves the tough one, the predominantly old-age disease, cancer. But even having regard to that, if cancer catches up with us, because of mainstream medical advances, we have a better chance of surviving it than ever before.

Meanwhile, medical quacks and magic remedy merchants are conning unfortunate cancer victims to the extent that they themselves are often a worse curse on society than cancer itself.

The Asker Trilogy