Cancer Statistics

It is interesting to look at cancer statistics. Thanks to research we know many facts about cancer incidence and the factors that contribute to it. There is a very strong racial and geographical bias in who gets cancer and who doesn’t. The geography is interesting. In Japan, there was a very high risk of gastric cancers probably due to eating lots of smoke foods. That risk is starting to disappear as habits change. There was, according to many cancer statistics, a very low incidence of uterine cervical cancer in Israel probably due to specific sexual practices and circumcision.

If you look at some of the charts of cancer statistics in female population, there is an interesting change in trend in lung cancer. This has to do probably with the advent of the women’s liberation movement, which made it much more acceptable for women to smoke. Lung cancer rose at a dramatic rate.

It is interesting that the incidence of breast cancer stayed about the same, but the death rate from lung cancer now exceeds the death rate from breast cancer. There are more breast cancers still, but lung cancer is much more fatal. There is also a decline in colon cancer because of endoscopy. We started looking at colon cancers through the colonoscope and it turned out we can take out most of them in early stages. Now we are getting to these before they are full blown cancers and we’ve achieved a huge decline in both incidence and death rate.

Lung cancer is very high in Asia, where people smoke much more heavily than in this country. Primary hepatic cancer (cancer of the liver) is very high also in Asia because of a combination of something called aflatoxin. Aflatoxin is a toxin that comes from a fungus and they occur in poorly stored grains. Liver cancer is very common in Asia and Africa, and virtually unheard of in America. Maybe you’ve heard that someone got liver cancer, but I’m almost sure he doesn’t.

There is a difference between primary cancer and metastatic cancer. When a cancer starts, for example, in the breasts, that is called primary breast cancer. When that cancer spreads to the brain or the liver, it is still breast cancer. It’s not liver cancer. It is very rare to see primary liver cancer, meaning that the cancer started in the liver cells.

We see a lot of melanomas of the skin due to ozone depletion in the Southern hemisphere. There is big hole in the ozone layer right over Australia. Cancer statistics start to show a very high incidence of both melanomas and other kinds of skin cancers due to UV light.

There are racial factors in the incidence of cancer. Blacks, for example, are protected from the effects of UV light by the melanin, which are benign cells in the skin that filters out those lights. Skin cancers in blacks are much rarer.

Poverty is also linked to cancer. Just like it is with infectious diseases, it is not very good to be poor.

Return from Cancer Statistics to Cancer Main Page