New Statistics Show Increase, Not Decline in Cancer Rates

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New Statistics Show Increase, Not Decline, in Cancer Rates

By SHARON BEGLEY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Wall Street Journal

16 October 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.

" Maybe we were a little too eager to declare the effectiveness of

our intervention and prevention programs, " says , who

is associate director for the surveillance research program at NCI,

of Bethesda, Md., but wasn't among the authors of the new study.

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. "

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%.

National incidence data are based on reports from 10 registries in

the SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) program at

NCI, which samples 14% of the U.S. population by collecting cancer

reports from hospitals, doctors and clinics. The registries have 19

months to report cases to NCI.

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