Why are there so many people dying of cancer?

like diabetes, it is considered largely a "disease of civilization". we eat dead food, don't exercise, live in a polluted environment, go to "health care experts" who don't know the cause of illness, but just try to cover up the symptoms with poison pills.

Simple answer. People live longer.

100 years ago the number one killer in the USA was tuberculosis.

TB killed more people per 100,000 population than all cancers combined these days.

In 1906 the average survival from birth was 47 years in the USA.

Cancers were number 8 on the top ten list of killers in 1906.

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The average survival of people in the U.S. now is ~ 80 years.

Most cancers occur in older people - over age 50 and usually over age 65.

People did not live long enough to die of cancers 100 years ago.

By the 1950's we had antibiotics to cure most infectious diseases.

The result was that heart disease and cancers became the number 1 and 2 killers

instead of infectious diseases.

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The bottom line is that we all die of something sometime.

It is predicted that if we live long enough,

every one of us would develop some type of malignancy.

We all know young people who have succumbed to cancers or leukemias,

but mostly these are disease of aging.

If this were the case why did President Nixon enact the National Cancer Act of 1971?

Overall the mortality rate has dropped 5% from 1950 to 2005.

Maybe your perception is off, because you are getting older. As we age the more people we know die.

No it never was a rare thing. And actually cancer cases have dropped off during the past few years.

Theories range from environmental pollutants to artificial food preservatives, but I'm not sure if anyone really knows. I agree with you. I think the numbers are going up and up. I am a cancer survivor and my dad has cancer now. Great question!