Are We Losing the War on Cancer ?

A hundred of the world’s leading cancer specialists descended on Lugano in Switzerland last weekend to formulate a 10-point action Plan to finish off what president Richard Nixon started on 23 December 1971, when he signed the US  National Cancer  Act. Although the Act does not use the phrase “war on cancer” this was how it was widely received at the time.

Most Americans thought a cure for cancer would be discovered within five years – emulating the technological success of landing a man on the moon. But more  than 40 years later, few experts talk of a single cure  for the 200 known types of cancer. The optimism of the early 1970s has given way to dogged determinism of a cancer community under siege  from the growing global epidemic.

“Curing cancer is certainly more complicated than landing on the Moon”, said Peter Krammer of the German Research Centre in Heidelberg, one of the experts who attended the world Oncology Forum.

People needs to realize that there are two types of war on cancer – one focused on a cure for patients and the other based on the elimination of the disease, said Umberto Veronesi, a veteran Oncologist and a former Italian health minister.

“In 40 years, we’ve nearly doubled the curability rates for cancer and in another 40 years it is reasonable to assume that we’ll get near total curability,” Dr Veronesi told the forum. “But the second goal of eliminating cancer from the population is a Utopian dream because the incidence of cancer is increasing not decreasing. We can cure one patient, another patient arrives.”

Some cancers today are indeed curable compared  with 40 years ago-provided, of course, that they are detected early enough. For instance, some types  of testicular cancer that are 100 per cent curable today were invariably fatal half a century ago.

But cancer is still a leading cause of disease worldwide, accounting for around 13 per cent of all deaths in 2008. As the developing world becomes richer, those countries are also being affected by the cancers of the westernized world, which are dominated by the health impacts of smoking. If recent trends continue, according to the WHO, the global burden of cancer will increase to 22 million new cases each year by 2030 – a 75per cent increase compared with 2008.

“We don’t talk about the war on cancer because it’s almost clichéd. But perhaps it’s time to revive it and look at it again,” said Douglas Hanahan, director of the Swiss Institute  for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne.

We are winning some battles in the war, but most of the time we are losing them, essentially because cancer is a disease of extraordinary complexity, he told the meeting.  THE INDEPENDENTANT

Thanks,

Sunday Times of India- Time Trends,

04/11/2012