No miracles, perhaps, but a string of improvements that have saved a substantial number of lives over time: > A number of reported shifts in the survival rates

No miracles, perhaps, but a string of improvements that have saved a substantial number of lives over time: > A number of reported shifts in the survival rates since 1975 cast a spotlight on how more cancer patients are surviving longer. Consider the examples below. > Lung cancer: 12 percent to 23 percent > Female breast cancer: 75 percent to 91 percent > Colorectal cancer: 50 percent to 65 percent > Kidney cancer: 50 percent to 77 percent > Leukemia: 34 percent to 66 percent > Non-Hodgkin lymphoma: 47 percent to 74 percent[0] The post also complains about immunotherapy not delivering gains and treatment not improving for advanced cancers, but immunotherapies have made great progress on metastatic melanoma: > More recently, a cascade of new therapies has been game-changing in the treatment of metastatic melanoma, including first-generation and second-generation immunotherapies (anti-CTLA4 and anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibition) and BRAF and MEK inhibitors. As a result, 3-year relative survival for distant-stage melanoma has doubled over the past decade, from 20.6% for patients diagnosed during 2004 through 2006 to 39.3% during 2016 through 2018 [1] Unfortunately there are forms of cancer that haven't seen improvement, including uterine cancer: > Unlike most common cancers, survival has not improved over the past 4 decades for women with uterine malignancies (Table 6), largely reflecting a lack of major treatment advances.87, 88 Uterine corpus cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, yet there is a dearth of research activity89 and it ranked 24th in NCI research funding in 2018.90 The lack of progress has disproportionately affected Black women, who are substantially less likely to be diagnosed with localized-stage disease (57% versus 72% of White women; Figure 5) and have lower survival for every stage (Figure 6). [1] Perhaps I'm being unduly harsh when I agree media coverage needs to stop hailing miracles, but the author's warranted skepticism of the New York Times has shaded their analysis of the progress we've made on cancer. [0] https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2023/01/cancer-survival-rates-are-improving https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2023/01/cancer-s... [1] https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322/caac.21763 https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322...