Jeremy Laurance: Millions spent but disease still blights the lives of millions
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Your support makes all the difference.Four out of every ten people living today will develop cancer at some point in their lives. Year after year, the incidence continues to rise. It is our most feared disease yet, despite all our efforts to curb it, it continues its relentless advance.
Cancer is more common in the elderly and part of the rise in UK cases, which has been consistent over decades, is due to the ageing of the population. Improved screening and diagnosis has also boosted the figures for some cancers, such as breast cancer.
But researchers accept that there is still an underlying real increase in cancer linked with changes in lifestyle, such as growing obesity, and the environment.
Despite some spectacular successes against rarer cancers and those affecting children, little ground has been gained in the war on cancer. Many of the big advances - such as the discovery of tamoxifen which has extended the lives of thousands of women with breast cancer - were made more than 30 years ago.
Even though death rates in Britain have been falling in recent years, the disease still kills more people than it did in 1970.
Vast sums of money are being spent on cancer research, estimated at £450-£500m a year when all NHS, charity and pharmaceutical company funding is taken into account.
The bulk of this money is going on biological research - understanding the basic mechanisms of cancer - and developing new treatments. Only 2 per cent is spent on prevention, yet the experience of the past three decades - confirmed again by yesterday's figures - suggests that is where the real gains will be made.
Big falls in lung cancer in recent years are due to the fall in smoking which started its decline among men 30 years ago. Stomach cancer rates have come down by 85 per cent since the 1930s as diets have improved to include more fresh food and less preserved in salt.
Nothing illustrates it more clearly than these examples the influence of changes in lifestyle and the environment - and the potential gains in lives saved to be had from modifying them. Gains from treatment are insignificant beside these.
Cancer Research UK is due to launch a new drive on cancer prevention in belated recognition that it is an area that has been neglected in the past. It cannot come too soon.
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