Curing Cancer Means More Work, Less Media Hype

(March 16) -- The war against cancer has made significant strides since 1971, when then President Richard Nixon proposed a national strategy to combat the disease. But cancer threatens to afflict growing numbers of Americans, and cures for most types of the illness remain elusive.

And when it comes to portraying the severity of a cancer diagnosis or treatment options, media outlets are offering slanted, overly optimistic coverage that might be hampering prevention and fundraising for research.

Those are some of the conclusions in this week's cancer-themed issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).


More than $200 billion has been spent on cancer research since 1971, according to the American Cancer Society's Dr. Susan Gapstur, who co-authored a report in the journal on the cancer battle.

The money has made a dent in cancer deaths: They've dropped around 16 percent since 1991, along with a 1 percent annual decrease in diagnoses since 1999.

Even so, Gapstur noted at a press conference on the JAMA issue, "people are asking, 'Where's my cure?'"

More than 500,000 Americans died of the disease in 2009. Half of all men and one-third of all women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives.

Worldwide, cancer threatens to take over as the No. 1 cause of death.

"The increasing numbers and aging of populations, in conjunction with the dissemination of Western patterns of smoking, diet and physical inactivity, are already creating a global health crisis for many chronic diseases, including cancer," the report says.

Cancer is likely to have an impact on every American, which explains why it garners so much media attention. But that spotlight might be doing more harm than good, researchers say.

An analysis of eight major newspapers and five national magazines, published in the American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine, revealed that most Americans aren't exposed to the harsh realities that can accompany a cancer diagnosis.

Of the 436 articles analyzed, 13 percent mentioned that aggressive cancer treatments can fail, and 30 percent acknowledged adverse effects of treatment, like hair loss or nausea.

Less than 1 percent discussed end-of-life care.

That's a major problem, study authors note, given that half of cancer patients will die of the disease.

"Cancer's a bad thing, it's scary and not everyone is going to survive. It's a hellish thing to go through," JAMA's editor-in-chief, Catherine DeAngelis, said. "Report it all, the good and bad."

The report's authors note that media coverage helps patients make decisions about end-of-life care, pros and cons of treatment options and even interventions that can make dying from cancer less painful.

And while cancer mortality rates have decreased, credit is mostly due to less tobacco use.

"Lung cancer was an epidemic we created," Gapstur said. "Reducing tobacco's prominence has had an incredible impact."

But researchers warn that fewer deaths don't warrant complacency. Smoking has been reined in, but obesity threatens to become the cancer-causing factor of the future.

"We know that obesity is a causative factor, and avoiding it is so critical in this ongoing war," Gapstur said.

And Americans are getting older: 24 percent are now senior citizens, versus 13 percent when the war on cancer started. Inevitably, the aging population will lead to more diagnoses -- and more deaths.

"Cancer is, really, a disease of old age," Gapstur said. "As our population changes, we need to acknowledge the cancer mortality rates that will be affected."