Believe it or not, all of this is related to the Pink in question. There was an editorial in the Seattle Times today, about the war that America is winning. The war that the article is referring to is the War on Cancer, which was declared by Richard Nixon back in 1971.

Well, according to this editorial, we seem to be winning it:

Fewer people are dying of cancer. In fact, the decline rate in cancer deaths has nearly doubled. Researchers predict the rate of cancer deaths will be halved by 2015.

This is a welcome turn in the war on cancer declared in 1971 by then-President Richard Nixon. Since that president’s initial $100 million down payment, hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into cancer research and the result is amazing advances in cures and treatments.

Well that is good news. But the most important story is missing from this editorial. In a healthcare system that focuses heavily on treatment and cure, it is not surprising that very little has been accomplished in the way of preventing disease before it strikes. Preventing cancer is a helluva better option than treating it, but this editorial was completely silent about the rates of new cancer cases.

Maybe cancer patients are living longer and surviving disease, but the more important question is….has the actual rate of new cases gone down? In other words, are less people getting cancer to begin with?

Pink ribbons, anyone?

I was curious about this, so I did a little digging. And not surprisingly, found some statistics which again, really don’t tell the entire story. That may be because the entire story is difficult to tease out, but let’s take a look.

From the Online News Hour:

The National Cancer Institute reported this week ( this article is from 2001) a drop in new cancer cases and in deaths, news government officials welcomed as incredible progress. The report found between 1992 and 1998 the number of new cancer cases dropped 1.1 percent. The number of cancer deaths also dropped by 1.1 percent, much of that among black men. Four cancers– lung, prostate, breast and colorectal– make up 56 percent of all new cancer cases. Among those, only breast cancer cases continued to increase by more than 40 percent between 1973 and 1998.

So according to the NCI, the number of new cases did drop 1.1%. Not a tremendous number, but better than new cases rising 1.1%. However, the rate of breast cancer continues to increase by a rather large number. So much for the think pink mentality.

Moving along, we have yet other numbers, reported about a year later.

Reported in the Wall Street Journal October 16, 2002:

America isn’t winning the war on cancer after all.

Contrary to optimistic reports from the National Cancer Institute showing the incidence of several devastating cancers has leveled off or even declined in recent years, rates for at least some of those cancers has been rising, according to a new analysis by NCI scientists.

Previous indications of a decline reflected significant delays in reporting cancer cases, the researchers report Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. More accurate information about cancer rates presents a grimmer picture.

The revised estimates present a dispiriting picture of the nation’s progress in preventing cancer. Breast-cancer rates in white women had been almost flat since 1987, according to the original NCI figures, which the American Cancer Society also uses as the basis for the popular “facts and figures” on its Web site.

The reanalysis shows that breast-cancer rates actually have been rising 0.6% a year since 1987. That prompted the NCI scientists to call for research “to explain the cause for the recent rise in breast cancer incidence.”

So we’re not winning the “war” on cancer, if one wants to take into consideration the fact that there hasn’t been any drop in the number of people getting cancer. In fact, the number appears to be increasing.

Lung cancer in women also had been believed to be flat; the re-analysis shows it has been rising 1.2% a year since 1996. Melanoma rates in white males had reportedly been flat or even falling. The new analysis finds it has been soaring 4.1% a year since 1981, suggesting that prevention strategies that focus on staying out of the sun are falling short. Prostate-cancer rates in white males, rather than falling since 1995, have in fact been rising 2.2% a year. For white men, 1998 prostate-cancer rates are actually 12% higher than originally reported; for black men they are 14% higher.

Colorectal cancer cases for both genders and all races are 3% higher than first reported, suggesting that early-screening techniques (which focus on discovering precancerous polyps through colonoscopies) aren’t as powerful or widely used as hoped. The rate of colorectal cancer in white women, for instance, has been rising 2.8% annually since 1996, rather than the originally calculated 0.9%.

So, this does put a whole new light on things, doesn’t it.

Finally, I looked up cancer stats at the American Cancer Society. In 2007, they predict that there will be 1,444,920 new cases of cancer. In 2006, there were 1,399,790, and in 2005, 1,372,910.

So in raw numbers, cancer is rising. Now, we do have to take into consideration that there has been an increase in the population, although it really isn’t clear if that has anything to do with the higher numbers. Between 2005 and 2007, for instance, there’s an increase of about 72,000 cases. Unless there was a rash of cancer among newborns, or among immigrants to the U.S., it would be hard to blame an increase in population for those 72,000 extra cases.

Now, 10 years ago, in 1997, there were 1,382,400 new cancer cases. This is slightly higher than it was in 2005. I didn’t look up every year between 1997 and 2007, but it is interesting to note the fluctuations, and the fact that in the last two years, the rates have gone up.

Sorry, but I can’t really consider that we are winning the war if the rate of people actually getting cancer is not moving in a negative direction. And this is my basic gripe with the Pinkies.

Stay tuned to the final installment…

I was planning on continuing my assault on the pink campaign yesterday, but I had a migraine, and the day seemingly vanished. I also noticed when I was in the supermarket yesterday, a display of pink mints–cutsie little pink metal boxes with ribbons. How sweet! The mints, of course, were priced higher than others in the same category, and I wondered just how much of the revenue was actually being sent to breast cancer research.

And of the money that is donated to breast cancer causes, how much of it is actually being put to good use, as in being used to finance innovative studies that actually tell us something. As opposed to these same tired studies which look at the number of tomatoes you eat, or the servings of green vegetables. It has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that eating a diet rich in fresh green vegetables, fruit, and minimally processed foods is healthy. It may not be a specific “breast cancer fighter” but the healthier the diet, the healthier and stronger the body will be. And the less processed food that you eat, and the more organic food you eat, will go a long way in eliminating the intake of assorted and sundry chemicals, carcinogens, hormones, and antibiotics that all can wreck havoc on your overall health.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll have time today to finish up on my pink attack. There’s a big pink elephant sitting in the room, which the chemical and pesticide industry would like us to ignore. Focusing on mammograms, genetics and drugs allows public scrutiny to be averted from the things that are very likely causing this massive upswing in breast cancer.