A decline has been observed in diagnoses and deaths related to cancerdefine for the first time since 1990. The American Cancer Society made the report in collaboration with National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.
American Cancer Society's chief medical officer, Otis W. Brawley, said: "It is a significant milestone. The take-home message is that many of the things we've been telling people to do to be healthy have finally reached the point where we can say that they are working. These things are really starting to pay off."
Dropping rates of lung, prostate and colorectal cancers in men, and breast and colorectal cancers in women have largely contributed towards the overall fall in figures. Study suggests that the plunge started somewhere in 1999 but the downfall became evident when statistics for 2005 were analyzed.
As many as 1.4 million Americans are detected with cancer every year while 560,000 succumb to it.
Some portion of the downfall may imply that some people are not regularly screened for prostate and breast cancers, warns Brawley. However, many Americans are still largely being diagnosed with other types of cancer and overall the death rate has not come down.
"We still have a lot to do. If you look at the data, it's clear that we could still do much better -- much, much better," commented Brawley.
Declining number of smokers have greatly brought down cases of lung cancer which only makes some researchers feel that the drop in cancer rates is not unanticipated at all. These researchers feel that more emphasis should be laid on prevention and not just detecting and treating cancer, as it is happening now.
Ellen V. Sigal from an advocacy group named Friends of Cancer Research, said "We are really seeing that the investment in cancer research is really starting to pay off. I think we need to do both. We need to prevent more cancer, but we still need to treat those who get cancer more effectively."
Awareness and increased screening may have contributed towards lower rates of colon
define cancer where early detection helps in removing precancerous growths called polyps. Reasons for dropping prostate cancerdefine rates remain quite unknown but not many get screened for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a protein in the blood.
Similarly, fewer mammogramdefine screenings amongst women can partially explain the drop in breast cancer incidences. Another factor could be that very less women are taking hormonesdefine to ease hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms due to safety concerns.
"It's very difficult to say this is good news or bad news," said Ahmedin Jemal, strategic director for cancer surveillance at American Cancer Society. "The fact that you have lower detection rates is not necessarily good news. The reduction of lung and colorectal cancer is clearly good news. But it's not so clear for breast and prostate cancer."
According to study-lead Jemal, "This is really the first year that rates decreased in both women and men." But critics still maintain that rates of most types of cancers are increasing together with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, kidney cancer and melanoma.
However, Brawley mentioned that more efforts are needed towards promoting cancer prevention. He added that minorities and poor people had higher incidence and death rates for cancer while the new report indicates falling figures for all groups.
"If you look at the data, you can see there's something positive for black people and white people and Hispanic people," said Brawley. "There's something positive for men. There's something positive for women. There's something positive for rich people, and there's something positive for poor people. It's the first time in my career I can see positiveness for everything in the population, no matter how you slice it."
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