I found this article and thought some on this list would like to know how well we are doing.
This article from NYTimes.com
Success Stories Abound in Efforts to Prevent and Control Cancer
April 1, 2003
By JANE E. BRODY
Anyone who has recently lost a loved one to cancer may be inclined to think that little progress has been made in conquering this complex disease. That would be very wrong.
The advances in the last 50 years in understanding the causes of cancer and in detecting and treating it have turned many once fatal cancers into curable and, sometimes, preventable diseases.
In 1953, the American Cancer Society published what was to become an annual analysis of "Cancer Facts and Figures." It stated that the "only means of curing cancer are by X-rays, radium and surgery," that the cancer society was "studying the smoking habits of 200,000 men to determine if there is any connection between lung cancer and smoking," that "the number of cancer patients who were cured last year could have been doubled by early diagnosis and prompt treatment" and that "last year cancer took the lives of some 3,200 children."
Progress on Many Fronts
Today, we know that cancer is not one disease, but at least 100 different diseases, perhaps even thousands of diseases, each unique to an individual. Accordingly, here are scores of treatment combinations, each created to cure or arrest a particular type of cancer. Treatments include hundreds of drugs, immunotherapy and advanced forms of radiation that are often combined with surgery to cure once-fatal cancers, including childhood leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, melanoma and many formerly fatal cancers of the breast, colon and prostate.
Today we know that smoking causes more cancers than any other single factor and, nearly 40 years after this fact became clear, smoking still causes an overwhelming majority of cases of lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths in men and women. Up to 90 percent of the 157,200 lung cancer deaths that will occur this year could have been prevented if people did not smoke.
Avoiding the primary cause of lung cancer remains critically important, because there is not yet any effective way to screen for early signs of the disease, which is usually not detected until it is advanced. The cancer society's old recommendation for regular chest X-rays has long been abandoned as useless in screening for early cancer. Even with the most advanced treatments today, just 15 percent of lung cancer patients survive five years.
In contrast, amazing progress has been made in treating childhood cancers, although their causes remain a mystery.
Even though far more children are alive in the United States now than in 1952, fewer than half the number who died of cancer that year will be killed by cancer in 2003, about 1,500 children from birth to 14 years old. Just since the mid-1970's, survival rates for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer and one that in the 1950's was always fatal, have increased to 85 percent from 53 percent. Cure rates for some less common childhood cancers approach 100 percent.
In another striking example of progress, as recently as a decade ago, the survival rate for women who developed inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly aggressive form, was only 15 percent. Today, with modern combinations of chemotherapy, followed by surgery, more chemotherapy and radiation, about 70 percent of women who develop this cancer can expect to beat it.
And for the more common forms of breast cancer, researchers have proved that the once-universal treatment, radical mastectomy, is in most cases no more effective (and sometimes less effective) than a lumpectomy, an operation that is much less involved, followed by radiation therapy and often chemotherapy.
Early Detection
After cancer has escaped from its site of origin, the ability to cure it plummets sharply. Although some cancers are so aggressive that early detection may not be helpful, in most cases it is lifesaving. For example, when colorectal cancer is detected while still apparently localized, 90 percent of patients are alive five years later, and most are cured.
But after this cancer has spread to adjacent organs or lymph nodes, the five-year survival rate drops, to 65 percent, and when the cancer has spread to other distant organs, the rate drops, to 9 percent.
The statistics are equally striking for breast cancer. For women with cancer that is diagnosed as localized, the five-year survival rate today is 97 percent, up from 72 percent half a century ago. For regional spread at diagnosis, the rate is 78 percent, and for distant spread, 23 percent.
Half a century ago, the American Cancer Society, among others, said it believed, "Early curable cancer often betrays itself by one of seven danger signals." The society listed those as "a sore that does not heal, a lump or thickening, unusual bleeding or discharge, a change in a wart or mole, persistent indigestion or difficulty in swallowing, persistent hoarseness or cough, a change in normal bowel habits."
Now we know that these symptoms often signal, not early, but advanced disease. We know that in their early stages, most cancers cause no symptoms. Because of that, "early, curable cancer" requires submitting to regular examinations that can disclose footprints of possible cancers or even cellular changes that have not yet become full-scale cancers.
Perhaps the most striking example of this is the Pap smear for early detection of cervical cancer, once a leading cause of cancer deaths in women. The Pap smear can disclose changes in cervical cells that preclude invasive cancer, permitting treatment that prevents cancer.
Because of the Pap smear, the incidence of cervical cancer has declined steadily. Death rates have declined nearly 80 percent since the 1930's. Now precancer of the cervix is detected far more often than actual cancer. An estimated 4,100 Americans will die of the cancer this year.
With any luck, the P.S.A. (for prostate specific antigen) blood test will have similar effects. As a cause of an estimated 28,900 deaths this year, prostate cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer deaths, after lung cancer, in American men. Black men and those with close relatives who had the disease are especially at risk.
As with most other cancers, early localized prostate cancer usually produces no symptoms. More and more, it is being found when the blood test suggests trouble, prompting biopsies. Since the advent of the test, death rates from prostate cancer have declined. Today, 85 percent of prostate cancers are detected at localized and regional stages, and virtually all of those men survive their cancers at least five years.
Other common cancers that lend themselves to early detection include breast cancer (mainly through routine mammograms), colorectal cancer (especially through colonoscopy, which can detect and remove precancerous lesions, as well as early cancers), and skin cancers (through visual vigilance).
One of the cancer society's seven danger signs remains important to early detection, a change in a wart or mole, possibly signaling the start of a melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer.
Recognition of these changes and, sometimes, removal of moles even before changes occur, have resulted in the diagnosis of 82 percent of melanomas while they are still localized and have a five-year survival rate of 96 percent.
Another change is worth noting. Fifty years ago, one American in seven died of cancer. Today, it is one in four. The difference reflects two facts. The leading cause of death, heart disease, has drastically declined as a cause of death since 1970, especially in men, and the life expectancy of Americans continues to climb. With longer lives and more escapes from deaths from heart disease, more people will develop cancer, which is primarily a disease of older people, and die from it.
The job of conquering cancer is far from over, but to accomplish it will require the joint efforts of researchers, clinicians and especially every one of you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/health/anatomy/01BROD.html?ex=1050293003&ei=1&en=73c655a7c8a56640
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company