When I was in my 20s, conversations with friends often focused on relationships and career; in my 30s, more often than not we talked about children. Now I'm in my 40s, and the topic of cancer seems to be creeping into our discussions with surprising frequency.
"When I was younger, I don't remember so many people being diagnosed with cancer," says Lisa Gross, whom I've known since my children were young. "Now it seems that every other day, you hear about someone getting it."
Some of my friends worry that cancer is more common than it used to be -- that we are experiencing a cancer epidemic of sorts. It's easy to understand why they feel this way, with cases of cancer cropping up all around them and affecting people they know. But the statistics suggest otherwise.
The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, released in October, found that cancer incidence rates (or the rates at which new cancers are diagnosed based on the size of the population) have stabilized and, for many of the most common forms of cancer, are actually dropping. "It's a pretty favorable picture right now," says David Espey, a cancer epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among men, incidence rates for lung cancer (the leading cause of cancer death in men) decreased by 1.8% a year from 2001 to 2004, and rates for colorectal cancer fell by more than 2% annually. Perhaps most impressive were the changes in the incidence of breast cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer death in women, behind lung cancer. Those rates for women dropped by 3.5% a year during this period.
Cancer experts can't pinpoint exactly what is responsible for these encouraging trends, but they have a pretty good idea of what may be influencing some of them. The decrease in lung cancer cases is clearly related to the fact that fewer people are smoking than in the past. Less smoking means less risk.
The recent decline in breast cancer cases may also be tied to a widespread reduction in risk. "The biggest driver is probably the decreased use of hormone replacement therapy in post-menopausal women," says Espey. In 2002, the Women's Health Initiative found that the long-term use of replacement therapy increased a woman's risk of breast cancer. Since the study's release, the use of the therapy has fallen substantially.
