Lifestyle changes, the key?
A report from researchers at the University College London and Kings College London states: “It is realistic to expect that by 2050 nearly all cancer-related deaths in children and adults aged up to (say) 80 years will have become preventable through lifestyle changes and because of the availability of protective technologies and better pharmaceutical and other therapies.” According to the World Health Organisation, 14 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year, with about 8.2 million dying of the disease.
The rise before the fall
And those numbers are generally thought to be on the rise. WHO reports that the number of new cancer cases is expected to increase by 70 per cent over the next two decades. Over the same time period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from 8.2 million a year to 13 million annually. But keep moving into the future, and those numbers will conceivably drop.
The researchers point out that cancer advances have come in leaps and bounds in the past few years. “Continuing rapid advances in biomedicine and associated disciplines, including not only molecular biology and human genetics but also health psychology and medical sociology, have led to claims that more has been learned about cancer in the past two decades than in the preceding two thousand years,” the report says. So if research continues at that pace, it makes sense that this progress would be successful in making inroads in stopping cancer mortality.
More awareness and investment needed
The researchers credit factors such as earlier diagnosis, declining smoking rates and better radiological, surgical and drug treatments. If people are more aware of cancer and its symptoms, for example, they are more likely to see a doctor and catch it in the treatable stage.
But they caution that there is no simple answer to ending cancer and there must be a deeper investment in cancer care. “Such realities mean that there cannot ever be a single, low cost, ‘magic bullet’ technical solution to overcoming all the challenges that cancer presents.”
