Given this background, the public needs a way to continuously monitor how cancer is being controlled. Unfortunately, there is no systematic way to get progress reports on cancer research that the general public can understand, even though their tax dollars and voluntary donations paid for much of it. We are mostly deluged with bad news. If anyone wants to get a high profile for an environmental cause of any kind they just say it causes cancer.
But there is a national system to monitor progress in the control of cancer. It is called the SEER Program (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results), which studies a sample of 12 percent of the U.S. population for cancer incidence, survival and mortality . This is a marvelous program, and 12 percent is a huge sample size as these things go, so these data are truly reliable. Statistics are always out of date, however, because it takes so long to collect and publish the information, and statistics are, and always will be, confusing to doctors and lay people alike. Statistics are also subject to manipulation by anyone who wants to create suspicion by quoting information out of context.
Here is one example of how statistics can confuse. Even if we are successful in reaching the goal set by the National Cancer Institute in the U.S.A. of reducing mortality from cancer by 50 percent by the year 2000, cancer will move from the number-two killer in the United States, behind heart disease, to number one. This is because mortality from heart disease is declining much faster than cancer mortality. Think of the confusing stories this will generate in the press. The National Cancer Program of the U.S. will take its bow for achieving what would be a singular success, and the critics will shout, "Despite billions spent on the war on cancer, cancer moves to number-one killer in the U.S.!"
