לסקרנית ורמי - על רפואה קונבנציונלית ואלטרנטיבית

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באתר שהבאת כותב המחבר: I have tried to be accurate AND unbiased in these examinations" אין ספק שהוא נכשל בכך. וזו התמונה האמיתית: CANCER DEATH RATE DRAMA The US cancer death rate declined by one-half of one percent between 2003 AND 2004...and the world went wild. In fact, on January 17, 2007, President Bush paid a rare visit to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, to bask in the reflected glory of this alleged turning point in the war on cancer. "Progress is being made," Bush claimed, after attending a roundtable discussion with cancer scientists. "We're spending about $28.6 billion here at the NIH, which was doubled from 15 years ago." However, the President failed to mention the equally significant fact that his administration has cut the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) budget by approximately $72 million between fiscal years 2005 AND 2007. Bush called the decline in cancer deaths "the steepest drop ever recorded." While technically true, this statement gives the unmistakable - AND misleading - impression that the decline in the number of deaths was both dramatic AND precipitous. This is not the case at all. As the respected weekly Cancer Letter trenchantly pointed out, the number of cancer deaths had either risen OR remained the same, on a year by year basis, for over 70 years since record-keeping began. Meanwhile, the widely trumpeted decline in US cancer deaths amounted to only a few thousand - a fraction of a percentage point of the overall toll taken by cancer in 2004. AND in 2003 the fall was even smaller, amounting to less than four hundred fewer deaths. Yet on the announcement of that minuscule drop, also, scientists made a self-congratulatory mountain out of a statistical molehill. This year, the leaders of the cancer war, accompanied by legions of enablers in the mainstream media, seemed to lose all sense of proportion. This was "big news," they intoned, "very exciting;" we've "finally turned the corner," it is "highly gratifying," "no fluke," AND so on. John R. Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS), said, "The hard work towards preventing cancer, catching it early, AND making treatment more effective is paying dramatic, lifesaving dividends." Wow! That's a heavy burden of unwarranted assumptions to place on the shoulders of such a small change in mortality statistics. Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, the epidemiologist who prepared the report for the ACS, declared that the decline "is not only continuing, but the decrease [in 2004] is much larger" [than that recorded for the previous year, 2003]. But "much larger" is a relative term. According to the figures released by the American Cancer Society (ACS) there were 553,888 US deaths from cancer in 2004. This compared somewhat favorably to the 556,902 cancer deaths in 2003. 2004's figure thus represented a decline of 3,014 deaths, just over half of one percentage point. In 2003, by comparison, there were 557,271 deaths, just 369 fewer than 2002's total. While any drop in cancer mortality is certainly good news, we have to ask whether the small declines recorded in these two successive years represent some decisive turning point in the war on cancer (as nearly everyone has unquestioningly assumed) OR whether it may simply be a statistical glitch in an otherwise unremittingly grim picture. Are we seeing "light at the end of the tunnel," as Larry Norton, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, told Public Broadcasting System's Jim Lehrer OR could it be the headlight of an approaching train? Of course, politicians of all stripes were quick to seize the opportunity AND exploit it to the full. However, it remains to be seen whether this tentative two-year trend (spanning the years 2002-2004) will be sustained into the present day. While I join in appreciating each AND every extra life that is not lost to cancer, there are good reasons for skepticism about the self-congratulatory mood that has overtaken the oncology profession in the light of this news. For example, one need look no further than the American Cancer Society's own recently-released publication, 2007 Cancer Facts & Figures, an annual review that gives a good statistical projection for cancer incidence AND mortality in the current year. For 2007, the ACS projects a cancer death figure of 559,650. But wait a minute. Isn't this actually 5,762 more deaths than those recorded for the year 2004, the year that triggered the recent Presidential celebration? According to statistics given in consecutive editions of Cancer Facts & Figures, which are available online, US cancer deaths for the last five years were as follows: 2002 557,650 2003 556,902 (a decline of 369 over previous year) 2004 553,888 (a decline of 3,014 over previous year) 2005 570,280 (an estimated increase of 16,392 over previous year) 2006 564,830 (an estimated decline of 5,450 over previous year) 2007 559,650 (an estimated decline of 5,180 over previous year) Perhaps there is some logical explanation for the steep increase in 2005, although I have yet to see one. One is hard pressed to find anyone who has even noticed this less than encouraging projection, although such statistics are easily available at the ACS Web site (www.cancer.org). I came across only one publication that pointed out this discrepancy: the SeniorJournal.com, which tracks trends of interest to Baby Boomers (see below). The SeniorJounal's headline read: "Cancer Society Predicts Cancer Deaths to Increase in 2007 Despite Long Rate of Decline." This seems to me to be a more accurate AND newsworthy way of reporting the story. Yes, the absolute number of US cancer deaths did decline a little between 2002 AND 2004; however, this year's projected death toll is already more than it was at the end of 2003. Unfortunately, this inconvenient fact does not fit the propaganda needs of those who are committed to the notion that we are making slow but steady progress in the war on cancer. By AND large, the media latched uncritically onto the ACS AND NCI press releases, AND ignored any inconvenient truth that might disturb the rosy picture that these organizations systematically project. (The issue may be further clouded by the fact that in 2006, ACS statisticians modified their method of tallying cancer mortality. They claim that they now utilize a new AND more accurate method of projecting mortality figures, including a larger sample that includes 86 percent of the population. One can only be thankful for improved scientific record keeping. But I read no analyses claiming this new method affected estimates of the overall cancer death rate.) If the projected 2007 figures prove accurate, as those for previous years generally have, then the alleged "turnaround" in the cancer mortality figures between 2002 AND 2004 will turn out to have been a temporary phenomenon, a statistical hiccup that, absent the political agendas of the various key players, would normally have passed without notice outside of a narrow circle of biostatisticians. Enter the Baby Boomers There are also other reasons for skepticism. It is no secret that cancer is primarily a disease of one's later years. According to government (SEER) data, the median age of US cancer patients at death is 73 years. Of course, this varies by tumor type as well as other factors: for example, the average age at death is 69 years for breast cancer, 71 for lung cancer, 75 for cancers of the colon AND rectum, etc. Ethnicity is also relevant: for example, African-Americans in general die of cancer at a younger age than so-called Caucasians. All other things being equal, however, a nation's death tally from cancer largely depends on the age of its population. Put another way, the larger the senior citizen segment of the population, the more cancer deaths there will be overall. As is well known, a great many people alive today were born in the post-World War II era, between 1946 AND 1958. They are collectively known as the Baby Boom generation. (Some experts now contend that the definition of this postwar generation should be expanded to include people born through 1964.) This cohort began when GIs returned from the War AND the US economy expanded rapidly. The birth rate during this period was more than 50 percent greater than for the preceding generation, which was born during the Depression years. In fact, there were over 79 million babies born into the Baby Boom generation. In the next few years, as these Baby Boomers enter their senior years, cancer incidence will also tend to increase. In about ten to fifteen years, the Baby Boomers will start to die of the diseases of old age, including, of course, cancer. The impact of such demographics will then be solidly felt on national mortality figures for cancer, as well as other diseases. Thus, unless something changes radically in the sphere of cancer treatment OR prevention, we can expect that there will be a steady upturn in the overall cancer death statistics, coinciding with the aging of the Boomer generation, AND that this will continue for a decade OR longer. The reality of rising cancer mortality figures in an aging population will hit us hard, AND it is something for which our leaders appear unprepared, both intellectually AND practically. It is likely to make all the current talk about the decline in cancer mortality, AND the conquest of cancer, sound increasingly hollow. --Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. http://www.cancerdecisions.com/012807.html