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Prevention and Early Detection | |
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| The Cancer Cure | |
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True or False?: There is currently a cure for cancer, but the medical industry won't tell the public about it because they make too much money treating cancer patients. Respondents Who Agreed: 28% Origin: Urban Legend Reality: One argument against this conspiracy theory is the fact that doctors, laboratory scientists, and their loved ones die of cancer at the same rate as everyone else in the US. (One exception is that health care professionals and biomedical researchers are less likely to die of lung, larynx, esophageal, and other tobacco-related cancers because they are more aware of the danger of tobacco and much less likely to be smokers than the rest of the population.) And why would anyone hide a cure for cancer? Medical breakthroughs of all kinds are quickly announced and applied - as the world has seen with antibiotics and vaccines, such as the polio vaccine. Also, finding one all-encompassing cure for cancer is unlikely because cancer is actually many different diseases. For several forms of cancer, cures are already available for the majority of patients. Only a few decades ago, fewer than one in 10 children with leukemia survived 10 years after diagnosis. With modern chemotherapy, the cure rate for these children is almost 80%. Examples of similar progress include Hodgkin's lymphoma, bone and kidney cancers in children, and testicular cancer. Fewer than half of all people with cancer in the US actually die of the disease - and many who are not "cured" of cancer still go on living for years with relatively few changes in their lives. Revised: 12/19/2005 |
