https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cance...
Page 2 has the figure. Getting people to not smoke has been the most effective treatment in our lifetime.
Public health is a really big deal, and RFK et al are a disaster for the nation.
Well, depending on how cynical you are. I'm sure there are those that are happy to let the 'senecent' people die of cancer and have a younger population and healthier population pyramid.
Getting older, I'm not subscribing to that, but it sometimes feels like the RFKjr -style interventions are calculated. Then again, this theory makes zero sense when dismantling herd status for measles (I don't think 'natural measles survivors' are genetically 'better' than the rest of us)
Wow, I’ve joked about the prospect so frequently that realizing it has a real Twitter subculture hit me hard. Describing people like that… it’s akin to derisively referring to “the dysfunctional” part of society, to pick on my own disability. The parallels to the Nazi’s ableism are pretty hard to ignore :(
But on a lighter note: is there any belief more certain to spoil?? My god. Don’t underestimate the moral worth of futureYou, folks. I guess delighting in their assured regret is a bit of a guilty pleasure, but it helps!
RE:RFK, I think you’re indeed overestimating their intentionality. They intuitively feel that measles wouldn’t affect them because they’re stronger, and would do their best to dance around that belief if pressed beyond their comfort zone of cherry-picked facts.
But really, they’d much prefer to just not think about that part altogether IMO; ‘MAHA’ is much more about hypernaturalism & tradwives than it is about public health. This is all just annoying scaffolding to them.
It is always interesting to point out to people claiming it would be better to not cure people that over half of the people in the room would be dead by the age of 5. That likely includes them.
Utilitarianism can justify that kind of policy/behavior. It makes economical sense, with your free the burden of society it free resources so people be more productive, afford things, live happier lifes (at least on the material sense), have children.
Though I don't subscribe to utilitarianism or the notion that the value of an human being can be reduced to its economical aspects. It's not my moral compass.
Looking through that, they seem to leave out what would be the most interesting comparison - expectancy adjusted for stage at detection against time? Edit Claude suggests the problem is bordering on intractable, but table 7 in this link is probably as good as it gets https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac...
Oh wow, not as impressive as I thought, but I guess we are looking at broad categories rather than specific types and variants. But overall the trend is down on ever cancer since around a decade ago. Was expecting a sharper drop around 1-2 decades ago, but things just take time when it comes to experimenting with human lives. Will be interesting to revisit this in another decade when a lot of the treatments finally leave the experimental stage.
Unfortunately, we actually don't make the kind of general widely applicable gains in treatment that people believe we have. We're not in a much different place for major cancers than we were 30 years ago, and I don't see much value in assuming we will just suddenly improve.