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Cancer: The Good News Behind The Bad News

A picture of a human brain taken by a positron emission tomography scanner, also called PET scan, is  displayed at the Regional and University Hospital Center of Brest
A picture of a human brain taken by a positron emission tomography scanner, also called PET scan, is displayed at the Regional and University Hospital Center of Brest

The American Cancer Society says the U.S. has just recorded the largestdrop in cancer death rates ever. These figures are just the latest in a nearly three-decade decline in the cancer death rate, which accounts for nearly three million fewer deaths since 1991.    

Leading this decline is a drop in the number of deaths caused by lung cancer, which kills more people than breast, prostate, colorectal and brain cancers combined.  

But this raises some questions. Are we getting better at treating cancer? Or are we getting better at preventing cancer?  Is everyone benefiting equally?  

And if you take lung-cancer related deaths out of the equation, do you get a much different story about cancer mortality?  

We explore the research.

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