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Cancer has always been a part of the diseases of mankind. For centuries, people spoke of it only in whispers, or not at all. They act as if the disease is dreadful and shameful as well. Today, thanks to advanced clinical research, cancer cures are readily available.
But in context, the picture is not as bleak as it might seem. At the beginning of the twentieth century, survival from cancer was relatively rare. At the end of the 1930's, the five-year survival rate (alive after five years) was one in five or fewer. Ten years later it had shot up to one in four, and in the mid-fifties to one in three. This figure has remained relatively stable because the survival rate for some of the more widespread cancers has leveled off despite the best efforts of physicians to devise better forms of treatment. For such cancers, which include those of the breast, colon, and rectum, improvements will come through earlier detection and even prevention.
In the war against cancer, considerable progress is being made on many fronts. It ranges from advances in early detection to breakthroughs in treatment. Although cancer is most common in people over 50, it can strike at any stage. There has been a 50 percent dip in the death rate from cervical cancer with the past 25 years, mostly because of increasing acceptance of the Pap test, which can detect the disease at a very early age. Children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, which used to be invariably fatal in weeks or months, have benefited from new therapies, with at least half now surviving three years, some more than five years, and a few on the verge of being pronounced cured. Similar advances in the treatment of a cancer of the lymph system called Hodgkin's disease have improved the five-year survival rate from 25 percent at the end of World War II to about 55 percent today.
Cancer would surely be easier to detect and treat if it were a single entity with a single simple cause. Unfortunately, it isn't. There are some 200 different diseases that can be called cancer. Two in five people are susceptible to cancer at some point in their lives. They develop different reasons and in different ways, originate in different tissues, demand vastly different kinds of treatment, and have different causes. In every case, cancer have one fatal element in common and that is, normal cells have gone wild and lost their growth and development controls.
The behavior of various types of cancer differ with one another. For example, lung cancer and breast cancer are very different diseases. Both grow at different rates and react to different treatments. Cancer cures are used alone or in combination, to either control the growth of cancer cells or to entirely eliminate the disease, depending on the type of cancer.
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