Cancer set to pass heart disease as leading killer - CA

[dArKeR]

By DARREN YOURK
Globe and Mail Update

Cancer is on track to pass heart disease as the leading killer of Canadians by 2010, the Canadian Cancer Society said Wednesday.

The group's latest look at cancer rates across the country estimates there will be 145,500 new cases of cancer diagnosed and 68,300 deaths from the disease this year. The most common cancers continue to be breast cancer for women and prostate cancer for men

The 2004 statistics also show that while a person's individual risk of developing cancer remains relatively stable, the number of new cancer cases and deaths have been rising steadily as the Canadian population increases and ages.

Experts project that the number of new cases of cancer diagnosed each year in Canada will increase by 60 per cent over the next two decades.

http://theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040414.wcancer0414/BNStory/National/

We can't be far behind them!

In my opinion, I feel I see more % people smoking than 'they the Gov.' reports.

[enki23]

1. alternate title: mortality rate due to heart disease down

.

[Heddi]

2. but smoking isn't the only cause of cancer

we're exposed to far more chemicals in our daily lives than we've been in the past, and while the safety of INDIVIDUAL chemicals we encounter daily have been noted, no study has tested the safety of chemicals combined together.


Think of the things we surround ourselves with daily---carpet glue, laundry detergent & fabric softner, cleaners (both household and industrial), pesticides on (and in) foods, hormones & other chemicals on (and in) meat, etc. Not to mention all the medicines and additives and preservatives and things that we ingest on nearly an hourly basis throughout our lives.

What are their cumulative effects? Yes, smoking causes respiratory-type cancer, but why is breast ca on the rise? why is ovarian ca on the rise? Why are other cancers, not related to smoking, on the rise? What is it that we're either exposing ourselves to, or being exposed to without our knowledge (or without knowledge of their long-term effects) that is causing more and more cancers to affect more and more people across the world?

[sam sarrha]

3. lung cancer is up 600% in the last 30 years from smoking.. and not just

because they smoke but because of their boyfriends/husbands, people around and fathers smoke..side stream smoke is a lot worse than anyone knows.. information is subverted.. women get lung cancer much easier than men.

[northzax]

5. hmm, interesting

second hand smoke has always been a problem, no? Find me a non-smoky bar from the, well, 1820-2000? they didn't exist. I remember in the early 80's how people smoked in supermarkets. and hospitals. and airplanes. and offices. and trains. and city buses. and on TV news shows. etc. It used to be that there was a non-smoking section in the corner. now there is a smoking section in the corner. Tell me again why second hand smoke is more dangerous today than it was in 1950? It was almost impossible to escape smoke then, now it is fairly easy (I can only think of one 'smoking' restaurant in the area around Dupont Circle in DC, the only place you can smoke is in the bars. So avoid the bars, and you pretty much avoid second hand smoke. Since twenty years ago there was much more 'side stream' smoke floating around, and had been for fifty years, you'd think that the rates would have declined, don't you?

[Heddi]

9. what you say is correct

and also, do we forget how the number of cars, planes, ships, etc, have increase exponentially in the last..oh..50 years or so? Tell me that ALLLLLL of those emmissions, not just from automobiles, but from factories and plants and the emmissions that go into the air (only to be rained down upon us), or that spill into the ground or into water supplies...you know, the ground that we plant our food in, the water we drink from...

As I stated above, we are INNUNDATED with chemicals from the day we're born until the day we die. Fabric softners, household cleaners, hormones in beef, roundup in our food supply, preservatives, artificial colours, artificial flavours, hormone this, antibiotic that....

Cigarette smoking is bad. That we all know. But it alone does not account for ovarian cancers. It does not alone count for uterine and cervical and vaginal cancers. OR brain cancers. Or bone cancer. Or testicular, penile, or prostate cancer.

We need to look beyond the "Smoking is the cause of all evil in the world" and find out what it is we're ingesting, breathing, eating, rubbing on our skin and washing our dishes with. What are the impact of these chemicals--not alone (as they've already been tested for safety), but what is their CUMULATIVE EFFECT when they're all put together in one human body?

[SoCalDem]

10. People live longer these days, and go to doctors more..

In my grandparents' day, they had midwives for births, and liniment and croup tents & aspirin.. Of course most died in their 60's or 70's.

My great grandfathers death certificate lists "dropsy"...great grandmothers' lists "fatigue"..

The diseases are not new, just the fact that people are getting earlier diagnoses, and are living with those diseases as a "chronic" rather than an "acute" consition..

From diagnosis to death, My grandmother lived only 2 months with leukemia. She was only 68. Now, she would have probably been diagnosed much earlier, and had a bone marrow transplant...and would have lived many more years..(maybe)

[sam sarrha]

17. those exposed then are dying now...............and have been, but the

tobacco lobby got legislation to prevent tobacco from being listed and a cause of death. Tobacco kills every year more than 700 times those killed in Iraq... and 6 times more than the total killed in the entire Viet Nam war.

[sam sarrha]

4. Cancer is up because the drug companies inhibit independant research and

they find no long term profit in a cure so they research only treatment to maintain the disease, or charge you rent on life.. quit paying you die.

many cancers are caused by viruses... Dr. Gallo was working on a military grant to study viruses that caused cancer ... when he discovered the AID's virus and then hid it for years untill someone else 'confirmed' the discovery.

[Throckmorton]

6. The number of esophageal cancer deaths has double,

in the last 20 years.

[shanti]

8. yes, my uncle suffers

from esophageal cancer, aunt just died from uterine cancer, another from breast cancer, another friend had TWO bouts with melanoma, father had lung cancer (albeit, his fault as he smoked for many years). it's frightening.

[Throckmorton]

11. Sorry about your Uncle,

My wife just died of Esophageal Cancer last month, she was just 40. Her ocologist told us that this type of cancer is becoming rampant in the USA. Interestingly, the incidence of it is 10 to 100 times higher in Asia.

[shanti]

13. throckmorton

i'm so sorry to hear of your wife's death...my condolences. did the physicians attribute your wife's cancer to something in particular? my uncle used to smoke and drink, but hadn't for quite some time before getting this cancer, but the docs never really pinned it on anything. my uncle had surgery to remove his voice box, and he still cannot eat, must be fed intravenously.:-(

[WarNoMore]

15. My deepest condolences to you and your family,

As a cancer surviver my heart goes out to you.

[sam sarrha]

18. my father smoked and died of esophageal cancer

[shanti]

7. i believe this!

there MUST be a cancer epidemic, because i hardly know anyone whose lives haven't been touched by cancer. something else that's sobering...WOMEN are dying and leaving husbands behind, instead of the other way around...

[Throckmorton]

12. Amen,

Im one of them, with two children 7 and 9.

[Frederic Bastiat]

14. Yup I hear you

My Mom and Mother-in-law were diagnosed with different cancers last year, both have recuperated and we hope there will be no remission.

[DrWeird]

16. So good news then.

Cancer rates aren't increasing, according to the article, so heart disease logically must be decreasing.

God, I hate science in journalism.