“According to the annual report from the American Cancer Society, the five-year survival rate for US cancer patients has crossed 70 percent, the highest ever recorded. The report also estimates that improved cancer treatment has averted around 5 million premature deaths in the US since 1991.”
Scientific American reports:
On Tuesday the American Cancer Society (ACS) released its annual report on cancer statistics in the U.S., and it offered a rare bit of good news: the proportion of people who were alive at least five years after a cancer diagnosis hit a record high.
The report found that, among all cancer patients diagnosed between 2015 and 2021 in the U.S., the survival rate at the five-year mark relative to those who didn’t have cancer was 70 percent. This is the highest rate ever recorded by ACS. The researchers attributed the gains to better detection and treatment, as well as cutbacks in smoking…
Some of the most fatal cancers saw the greatest improvement in survival. The five-year relative survival rate for myeloma (a type of cancer that affects bone marrow), for instance, nearly doubled between the 1990s and now, jumping from 32 to 62 percent, while liver cancer survival more than tripled from 7 to 22 percent.
In part, that’s because of greater understanding of the cancer genome and the development of targeted therapies against cancer mutations.
Nanorobots are being used to fight cancer. “In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University scientists…have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply,” reported Next Big Future.
Last year, a blood test was developed that detects many brain cancers that doctors previously couldn’t detect until it is too late to save most victims. Despite advances in fighting other kinds of cancer, “brain tumors have remained notoriously difficult to diagnose. They affect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year, and kill more children and adults under the age of 40 … than any other cancer.”
And a new blood test can detect which bowel cancer patients can receive a lifesaving immunotherapy rather than chemotherapy, enabling them to be cancer free after surgery. Around 10-15% of patients with stage two or three bowel cancer have a particular genetic make-up that enables them to benefit from the life-saving immunotherapy known as pembrolizumab.
Many people die waiting for the FDA to approve medical tests and life-saving drugs. The FDA can be rather slow. The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee, the test held “the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people likely got infected with AIDS as a result of the delay in approving it. As Roger Parloff noted in Fortune, the FDA’s delay in approving the home HIV test was a “scandal.” It caused the deaths of thousands of people.
At least a hundred thousand people died waiting years for the FDA to approve beta blockers. One of the FDA officials involved in delaying their approval was John Nestor. Nestor was notorious for following rules in ways designed to deliberately delay other people, such as his habit of deliberately driving slowly in the fast lane on highways in order to slow down other motorists.
