Medical Discovery News
Science permeates everyday life. Yet the understanding of advances in biomedical science is limited at best. Few people make the connection that biomedical science is medicine and that biomedical scientists are working today for the medicine of tomorrow. Our weekly five-hundred-word newspaper column (http://www.illuminascicom.com/) and two-minute radio show provide insights into a broad range of biomedical science topics. Medical Discovery News is dedicated to explaining discoveries in biomedical research and their promise for the future of medicine. Each release is designed to stimulate listeners to think, question and appreciate how science affects their health as well as that of the rest of the world. We also delve into significant biomedical discoveries and portray how science (or the lack of it) has impacted health throughout history.
Medical Discovery News
Cancer in the US
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1018 Cancer in the US
Welcome to Medical Discovery News. I’m Dr Norbert Herzog.
And I’m Dr. David Niesel
The American Cancer Society’s newest report on cancer in the US shows cancer is the second leading cause of death. That may sound bad, but there’s progress.
That doesn’t sound like progress, Dave.
It’s true, cancer is still a killer but over the past ten years, cancer death rates began to fall about one and a half percent every year – thanks to early detection, advances in research, and new therapies.
That’s true and the five-year survival rate is possible for seventy percent of cancer cases, up from just fifty percent in the nineteen-seventies. So, even though a cancer diagnosis is devastating, you have a high chance of surviving it today.
But for cancer deaths to continue to fall, we need to fund research including mRNA technology which is being used to create personalized cancer vaccines. It’s how we have a chance to cure cancer rather than just fighting it.
The National Cancer institute estimates cancer costs patients twenty-one billion dollars in out of pocket costs every year, and total costs in 2020 were over two hundred billion dollars. mRNA technology can create more affordable treatments.
We need to restore federal funding for research and combine that with more robust standards for air pollution, water quality, and worker safety.
Tackling cancer should come from every direction and we see that being compromised. But we have faith in the people working in medicine and science to restore a rigorous public health infrastructure, and we’ll continue to write about these issues.
We are Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog, at UTMB and Quinnipiac University, where biomedical discoveries shape the future of medicine. For much more and our disclaimer go to medicaldiscoverynews.com or listen to our podcast on your favorite podcast service.
