Cancerous Growth

A frightening prediction last week cast a shadow on the healthy and growing figures of U.S. life expectancy (69 years). The prediction: 31 out of every 100 males and 36 out of every 100 females born in the U.S. this year will eventually die of cancer. Without cancer, these children could expect to live about 15 years longer.

The prediction was based on the U.S.'s largest cancer survey to date, conducted by the National Cancer Institute among 14.6 million people in ten large metropolitan areas. Reporting the results of the survey's findings in the A.M.A. Journal, Dr.

John R. Heller and Biostatisticians Sidney J. Cutler and William M. Haenszel gave some significant facts about the nation's second biggest killer: P:At current rates, the number of cancer patients will increase by more than 50% during the next 25 years, since both the U.S. population and the proportion of older people are expected to increase.

P:The rise in recorded cancer cases (more than 500,000 new cases are being diagnosed in the U.S. each year) may be due to improved methods of detection, better-trained doctors, economic prosperity, which gives more people adequate medical care.

P:Cancer occurs at about the same rate in both men and women, but more men die from it at present because they are attacked more often in such inaccessible organs as the stomach and lungs.

P:From the ages of 20 to 60, cancer incidence is higher in women, after that in men. Before 65, cancer in women usually originates in the reproductive organs (breast and genitals), after 65 in the digestive system.

P:Both the incidence and death rate of cancer of the lung and bronchus more than doubled between 1937 and 1947.

P:Cancer seems more frequent in urban than rural areas.

P:Reported cancer is substantially lower among nonwhite persons than among white (272, compared with 333 per 100,000 in 1947), but much of the difference is due to the rarity of skin cancer among nonwhites, which is thought to be caused by a "true racial difference in susceptibility."

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