There were 2,591,855 survivors of breast cancer in the US on January 1, 2007. That's according to a new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. That's quite impressive. It comes to 22 percent more survivors since 2001 for breast cancer alone, and 20 percent for cancer overall. More and more are living with the disease, though there's living with and living with. Living with, for example, could actually mean dying. As the report states: Finally, the data do not permit specifying whether a cancer survivor is cured, in active therapy, living with a chronic cancer-related illness or disability, or dying from cancer.
Oh well. If you read the comments after the New York Times article about this, you get more food for thought. The commenters say that doctors over-test and over-diagnose, that survival isn't the be-all and end-all if you're out of work and the bank has foreclosed on your house, that toxins are still swirling about around and inside us.
I don't know what statistics would be more meaningful. You could see who has Stage 4, and count those people as soon-to-be-non-survivors, but then again some people are living with Stage 4 of various cancers. I suppose everyone is a survivor until they croak.
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