Cancer Deaths vs. Cancer Research
The two biggest killers on the cancer front are lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Yet the National Cancer Institute spends more research dollars on prostate cancer and twice as many dollars on breast cancer. The American Cancer Society, the largest private nonprofit source of research dollars, also devotes more money to breast cancer than any other.
We spend money on the diseases of the groups that lobby the most. What’a surprising about that?
The pancreas victims don’t have a very good lobby.
It took me a minute to notice that the death rates weren’t sorted.
In terms of years of life lost, I’d bet that ovarian and possibly the blood cancers are among the most under-funded.
Colon cancer isn’t exactly a glamorous subject. Nor is the pancreas.
But, you get a pink tote bag and a pink shirt if you support breast health.
How can the pancrease compete with such a good PR campaign?
Good point, Virginia. With males being so dominant in medicine for so long, women have had to get organized and pushy on issues affecting them.
Here is how I read the chart: We spend twice as much money trying to cure breast cancer as we spend on lung cancer, but lung cancer kills twice as many people. Isn’t it self-evident that we have misplaced priorities?
I wonder if the the little research on lung cancer is due to perceptions, whether right or wrong that lung cancer is self-inflicted and therefore should get less funding.
A minor quibble: funding is most productive when it is directed to areas in which it looks like progress can be made. This requires progress in scientific understanding, and that progress is often uneven.
That said, there is no doubt that the breast cancer folks have done a magnificant job lobbying or that federal funding has a lot to do with politics and relatively little to do with actual scientific prospects.
There is no doubt that cancer research funds are not necessarily being spent in proportion with death rates. However, Linda has a point – funding should be spent where it can do the most good.
For example, the most efficient way to fight lung cancer is probably to convince people to never start smoking. Once you have lung cancer, the prognosis is rarely good. On the other hand, colon and breast cancer are largely curable (or treatable) if caught early before the cancer has metastasized. Assuming people will develop lung cancer, colon cancer or breast cancer, the low-hanging fruit (so to speak) is probably is probably treating people with breast or colon cancer since I suspect a year of life can be saved at a lower price than with lung cancer.
it’s not surprising that breast cancer gets all the attention. Many brands make big bucks supporting breast cancer awareness. Maybe these other divisions could learn a thing or two from these stats? Interesting.
The statistics in the article don’t paint a clear picture. First, much of the money spent on breast cancer is raised specifically for that purpose, it’s not part of the National Cancer Institute’s general budget. And, some of the cancers on that list are far more aggressive than others: ovarian cancer has a low morbidity rate, but high mortality rate. Breast cancer and prostate cancers are more common but can be less aggressive and a patient can survive years with either (and often die of other causes).
It’s also important to note that while research is being done on specific cancers, the fruits of that research can often be shared and advantage patients with other types of cancers.
What needs to be considered here is that breast cancer has a more devastating collective effect on the community, not just individuals. Here are the median ages for diagnosis and death for the major cancers:
– lung: diagnosis 70, death 72 (2 year mean survival)
– colorectal: diagnosis 70, death 75 (5 yr survival)
– prostate: diagnosis 67, death 80 (13 yr survival)
– breast: diagnosis 61, death 68 (8 year survival)
For lung cancer we KNOW already what causes most of it and that rates could be slashed if the behavioral and environmental issues could be resolved.
For prostate, treatments and detection have already improved enough that you will notice survival time is double that of breast cancer. There are researchers who argue that virtually ALL men will develop some level of prostate cancer if they live long enough, that it is a natural consequence of aging.
Colorectal is still a concern but much progress has been made in treatment and survival rates — there is already good indication that increased colonoscopies woudl greatly improve successful survival rates. Note that its mean diagnosis is still almost 10 years older than breast cancer — these other cancers tend to be those of the aged.
Bottom line is that breast cancer is more likely than the other neoplasms to hit victims still in their prime, working and even still raising young children. Survival rates are HALF those of prostate cancer, despite being in a younger population overall.
Though any cancer is devastating to the individuals and families involved, breast cancer has a much higher economic and sociological impact on society as a whole because it takes out younger people, and we still understand less about its pathology and treatment than the other cancers. Its not an issue of “political correctness” or marketing to concentrate more on breast cancer. In fact it is completely defensable on both a scientific and statistical basis to allocate more resources to it than the other diseases.
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