X-Message-Number: 18816 Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 08:38:40 -0500 From: "Raphael T. Haftka" <> Subject: survival rates do not tell the whole story Cancer survival rates Cancer survival rates do not tell the whole story. As Daniel Crevier noted, the five years survival rates went up from 40% to 62% since the early sixties. However, a substantial part of that increase is due to earlier detection without any change in real survival rates. The most extreme example is prostate cancer. This is a cancer that usually develops very slowly, most men eventually develop it, and most die from other causes before it can kill them. Forty years ago, most of these cancers went undetected. Today they are usually detected, leading to a common variety of cancer that has excellent 5-year survival rate. There was an article in Scientific American in the last year or two that discussed cancer death rates (age adjusted) which have changed very little over the same period. I am sorry, but I do not keep my old copies of the journal so I do not have the exact source. Rafi Haftka Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18816