Speaking of cancer, the American Cancer Society announced some good news on Friday: Cancer death rates are continuing to decline and, best of all, new cases of lung cancer among women are falling after having steadily increased since the 1930s.
Though we covered these encouraging statistics back in April when the news was originally released, more details were recently revealed, including a 1.9 percent decrease in death rates for all cancer types among men between 2001 and 2007. For women, the death rates declined by 1.5 percent annually from 2002 through 2007.
The rates, however, differed according to race and education. The rates of both new cancer cases and death in black men were significantly higher than those rates in white males. And although the rate of new cancer cases decreased in black women, their cancer death rate remained higher than that of white women. Also of note, the least educated Americans had a cancer rate 2.6 times higher than the most educated demographic.
One would think that the media would be all over a report of such magnitude but, predictably, one of the few news outlets that failed to publicize the news were the editors at The New York Times.
Instead, they were too busy printing a story about a conclave of 100 anti-pharmaceutical activists who gathered to denounce pharmaceutical companies for their groundbreaking innovations, notes ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. We re not surprised but continue to be disappointed that The Times does not deem a decline in cancer death rates newsworthy.
