2008-06-12 Support cancer research now!

2008-06-12 \science\PZ Myers/posts\progress\cancer http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/support_cancer_research_now.php Support cancer research now! &ldquo;Those are survivorship curves for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. When the lines are plunging downwards, that means kids are dying like flies; when the lines flatten out horizontally, that means no kids are dying. Each line has a date for when the survival was measured. Look at the mid-1960s, the yellow line: 90% of the kids diagnosed with ALL would die within five years. But then look at the other curves â€” in the 1970s, 64% would die; in the early 80s, about half; in the late 80s, about 30%; in the 90s, about 20%; and now, about 10%. What's going on? .. We haven't been evolving ALL-resistant kids. The medicine has been getting better. Every percentage point that those lines are pushed upwards is the outcome of hard work and clinical testing of new drugs and protocols and therapies and diagnostic tools. That's impressive. This is how we progress. .. You will sometimes hear people claim that the answer is found in the natural healing power of the body, and that doctors don't really do anything but let nature do all the work (or worse, that treatments for cancer poison people and hinder nature's healing power). They may also say that children are just especially tough and healthy, so pediatric cancers are relatively easy... but look at the data. When doctors don't have effective treatments and don't intervene, we get those yellow lines from the 1960s. We get 90%+ survival when doctors can exercise their hard-earned knowledge.&rdquo;   