Cancer
If you or someone you love are facing cancer then there are some things you should be aware of. Cancer cases are appearing at an alarming rate. The mainstream medical community for the most part has been treating cancer the same way for over 50 years. New research that is often ignored by this mainstream indicates that there are factors which have been overlooked and ignored. There is a movement by many well respected doctors away from this mainstream to a more "unconventional" stand. This site only provides a glimps into this movement. If we could just get a marriage between the medical community and nutrition we would surely irradicate the hold that disease has on so many. There are many who believe that if you look hard enough you will find the truth and there are those who feel we already have.
Almost 1.27 million people were diagnosed with cancer in the year 2001: an estimated 643,000 men and 625,000 women. Nearly 43 percent of men and 38 percent of women in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. In 2001, about 553,400 people are expected to die from cancer: 286,100 men and 267,300 women. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease. Nearly 80 percent of all cancers are diagnosed at ages 55 and older. People who die from cancer lose an average of 15.1 years of their lives.
The number of cancer survivors is growing. About 8.9 million people in the United States are living with cancer. This includes people who have been diagnosed recently and are undergoing treatment as well as those who have completed treatment. The direct medical costs of treating cancer is estimated to be about $60 billion per year. Cancer rates overall reached a peak in the early 1990s.
From 1950 to 1990, the incidence rate for all cancers rose more than 45 percent and the death rate rose 10 percent. Of the 1.4 million new cancers diagnosed each year, almost 100,000 occur in people previously treated for cancer. Patients surviving one cancer have almost twice the risk of developing a second cancer as the general population has of developing a first. Children under age 15 who have survived cancer have eight times the risk. The reasons for this are unclear, although genetic susceptibility and the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatments are likely important factors.
Source: Statistics are from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) report, and from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Facts and Figures 2001, which contains estimates based on SEER data. For more information about cancer, visit the NCI Web site.
Break Through Research
