Effectiveness of the "War on Cancer"
One of the few controversial areas of my book, Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather, is where I compare progress in saving lives from extreme weather versus cancer, heart disease and automobile accidents where progress has been much slower.
Over at The Daily Caller, Margaret Cuomo makes the point this way:
Adding those numbers you get $3.6 billion in 2012 but that does not include the entirety of our spending on cancer treatment.
And, channeling Bruce Charlton, she also writes,
With the “war on cancer,” we may have created a framework that allows us to declare a stalemate, with no expectation of ultimate victory. We may have put generals in charge who think we should start talking about living with cancer as the “new normal.” At least that is what the director of the National Cancer Institute seems to be suggesting when he talks about “making cancer a disease you can live with and go to work with.”
I've said many times there are things medicine could learn from meteorology. That point is more valid than ever.
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