> Some of the higher cancer rates we're seeing now have to do with people
> surviving stuff that would have killed them a mere century ago. (At
> least, I think that's what my mother's parents were saying, and both of
> *them* were doctors, one of them in cancer research.) Cancer starts to
> get you because you survived long enough to have it develop.
>
> Julia
I was talking to my dad about this recently. He reckons that another thing
is that when he was young, cancer wasn't talked about, it was always (still
is often) referred to as a "wasting diease" or a "long illness". People with
TB and cancer wound up in the same sanatorium in his town.
So, as well as the fact that people are living longer, we also have a big
change in knoledge and public perception.
Charlie
Who knows they had leukaemia in the late 1800's, I saw it on Little House On
The Prairie... ;o)
