A few comments: Firstly early detection has gotten way better than the 90's. PET/CT's are standard in the USA now which is awesome for staging and diagnostics -

A few comments: Firstly early detection has gotten way better than the 90's. PET/CT's are standard in the USA now which is awesome for staging and diagnostics - still scarce in the rest of the World. Early diagnosis is huge in treating the big C. Drugs that aren't chemotherapy but are biotherapies (or immunotherapies) like Rituximab (Rituxin) are available now which have improved prognosis in some cancers by 15% which is a big deal. Pathology labs are doing a much better job now of identifying genetic subtypes which help target therapies. Right now they use staining techniques to figure out which subtype you have based on a known subtype looking the same way when stained. Hopefully one day they'll be able to sequence each pathology sample. Also just responding to a few comments about the economics: Cancer drugs and treatment are insanely expensive in the USA and much of the rest of the World. So the economic incentive is very much there for companies like Genentech to develop drugs like Rituxin (at $5K a dose). So my sense is that this isn't a cure or no cure disease. Instead we're accelerating towards improving outcomes by either putting the disease into remission in a lot of patients and delivering in some cases decades more life - or actually curing them.