CT: Huffington Post helpfully censors any comments critical of their bloggers.
Some batty anti-cancer activist posted an article about how 110 women per day died of breast cancer in 1975...and the number is the same today. And how we should end breast cancer by 2020 or something like that.
Of course, that completely ignores:
1. The age-adjusted incidence rate of breast cancer has increased.
2. The population is greying, so there are more women in the prime years for developing breast cancer than there were in 1975.
3. The mortality rate for breast cancer has declined since 1975.
So the net result is that in 1975, you could imagine 100 women had breast cancer and 10 died. In 2010, maybe 125 women would have breast cancer and 10 would die. The expected outcome has improved significantly.
And the idea of ending breast cancer altogether rather than developing effective treatments is quite frankly stupid. Obesity, genetics, environmental factors, & reproductive patterns all affect the incidence of breast cancer. Maybe medicine can address genetics eventually, but the other factors are things that can't be addressed through medicine.