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Medicine

5% of Americans are Cancer Survivors - and They're Living Longer (msn.com) 109

"The U.S. is currently home to more than 18 million cancer survivors," reports the Wall Street Journal, "over 5% of the total population" (including those who are living with the disease).

Their article tells the story of Gwen Orilio, who was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer at age 31. Ten years later she's still alive — and she still has metastatic cancer... Keeping her going is a string of new treatments that don't cure the disease but can buy months — even years — of time, with the hope that once one drug stops working a new one will come along. Orilio started on chemotherapy, and then switched to a new treatment, and then another, and another, and another... A small but growing population is living longer with incurable or advanced cancer, navigating the rest of their lives with a disease increasingly akin to a chronic illness. The trend, which started in breast cancer, has expanded to patients with melanoma, kidney cancer, lung cancer and others. The new drugs can add years to a life, even for some diagnoses like Orilio's that were once swift death sentences. They also put people in a state of limbo, living on a knife's edge waiting for the next scan to say a drug has stopped working and doctors need to find a new one. The wide range of survival times has made it more difficult for cancer doctors to predict how much time a patient might have left. For most, the options eventually run out....

More than 690,000 people were projected to be living with stage-four or metastatic disease of the six most common cancers — melanoma, breast, bladder, colorectal, prostate or lung cancer — in 2025, according to a 2022 report from the National Cancer Institute. That's an increase from 623,000 in 2018 and a significant rise since 1990, the report found... Nearly 30% of survivors diagnosed with metastatic melanoma and 20% of those diagnosed with metastatic colorectal or breast cancer had been living with their disease for a decade or more, the NCI paper estimated... Even for lung cancer, the biggest U.S. cancer killer, the five-year relative survival rate for advanced disease has inched up, from 3.7% for patients diagnosed in 2004 to 9.2% for patients diagnosed in 2017, federal data show. The overall lung cancer survival rate has risen by 26% in the past five years, according to the American Lung Association, as declining cigarette use, screening and new drugs have driven down deaths.

The expanding number of therapies that target a cancer's mutations or boost the immune system are improving the outlook for several cancers. In breast cancer, treatment for metastatic disease accounted for 29% of the drop in deaths between 1975 and 2019, according to one 2024 estimate, with screening and treatment for early-stage disease accounting for the rest.

The number of American cancer survivors (or those living with cancer) is expected to grow to 26 million by 2040," the article points out.

5% of Americans are Cancer Survivors - and They're Living Longer

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  • "The U.S. is currently home to more than 18 million cancer survivors"

    Time to call ICE, a real opportunity for the Trump administration.

  • While I'm not claiming to be normal, I have mixed thoughts on this. Most people will of course jump at the chance - and make no mistake, the treatments can kill you as well.

    Should the need arise, I might just elect to let things progress naturally.

    • Re:Some thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday August 18, 2025 @08:06AM (#65596950) Homepage Journal

      Should the need arise, I might just elect to let things progress naturally.

      I know someone who used to say that. They're about to start chemo.

      Me, I'm just mad about the USA ending investment in mRNA cancer drugs. Of course US Big Pharma doesn't want them to exist, because they actually treat cancer quickly.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by jsonn ( 792303 )
        What do you expect from a health secretary that wants to kill more people than Adolf, Mao and Joseph combined simply by intentional inaction?
      • Should the need arise, I might just elect to let things progress naturally.

        I know someone who used to say that. They're about to start chemo.

        There is a non-zero chance that I would decide to go chemo, but I'm pretty consistent in giving a lot of thought to such things.

        I don't even do maintenance drugs. Others my age that I know are into the multi numbered pill boxes for the dozen or so maintenance drugs they take. And adding more pills for the side effects. So I'm a real minority.

      • Re:Some thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday August 18, 2025 @08:47AM (#65597020) Journal

        Because the most profitable companies in the world can't afford or won't invest in research into what could be the most marketable drugs in history.

        Alternatively if you are right and they don't want them to exist, handing them baskets of federal dollars is sure to produce results right?

        Let some university pay the salaries of the people doing R&D, then mega-drug inc acquires the patents for a tiny fraction of what they are worth and fleeces the public for 25. The current system is just corporate welfare. Pfizer can do their own R&D or if they'd rather contribute to some university endowments in exchange for sweet heart patent deals.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          Let some university pay the salaries

          You mean one of the universities that are also being defunded because they won't play along with fascism?

          • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            Right, those Universities. Seems like a good way for them to be able to continue their 'mission' whatever they think it is without having to kowtow to the desires of politicians they don't agree with would be to have alternative source of revenue, no?

            If the government isn't a participant in circle jerk you can't have fascism.

        • Because the most profitable companies in the world can't afford or won't invest in research into what could be the most marketable drugs in history.

          There are fundamental different investment decisions made in for profit companies as there are for universities and for government grants. One looks for profit, one looks for fundamental understanding, one enacts policy. There's a place for all three in any fundamental new research and they build on one another.

      • There is nothing stopping US Big Pharma from investing their own money in the research.

        Normally on Slashdot there is some objection to a private company taking public money to develop something then also patenting the results and charging monopoly prices. Socialist the risk and privatizing the profits? Sound familiar?

      • Me, I'm just mad about the USA ending investment in mRNA cancer drugs. Of course US Big Pharma doesn't want them to exist, because they actually treat cancer quickly.

        "Big Pharma" had nothing to do with this. This is all on the anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He doesn't want vaccines which help people to exist. What he wants is for people to die from diseases then crow about all the people who didn't die so he can claim "natural immunity" is the way to go.

        This notion that "Big Pharma" doesn't wa
        • "Big Pharma" had nothing to do with this.

          Source?

          This is all on the anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

          Everything, and I do mean everything, that Trump or the Republicans are doing now are the things they have been telling us they wanted to do all along. You don't even need Project 2025 to prove it (although in general it does, since it's their wish list) as this is just stuff that tons of them always say and tons of other ones deny with a smirk.

          This notion that "Big Pharma" doesn't want to cure diseases is the typical lie spouted. If that were the case, why did they develop a vaccine which wiped smallpox off the planet?

          More profitable than using cowpox.

          If someone is inevitably going to come along and do it for free, they'd rather profit from doing it for a price. Don't be so

      • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        Of course US Big Pharma doesn't want them to exist, because they actually treat cancer quickly.

        Do you have any proof of that? It is a common conspiracy theory, but it doesn't make much sense when you think about it.

        Anyone finding a drug that treats cancer quickly will make billions, if not trillions. They can price it for absurd amounts and people will buy it anyways and they they will be glad to, because who wants the slow treatment? And because of the patent, for 20 years, any competitor with a lesser drug will be left in the dust. On a more macro scale, for as long as we stay mortal, drug companie

    • Re:Some thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)

      by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Monday August 18, 2025 @08:08AM (#65596952)

      It depends a lot on circumstances.

      You may change your tune if you have a small child when you get diagnosed.

    • Re:Some thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Monday August 18, 2025 @10:04AM (#65597204)

      While I'm not claiming to be normal, I have mixed thoughts on this. Most people will of course jump at the chance - and make no mistake, the treatments can kill you as well.

      Should the need arise, I might just elect to let things progress naturally.

      Steve Jobs had one of the few treatable forms of Pancreatic cancer [wikipedia.org]. He chose to try treating it with diet, herbs, and other naturopathic means.

      They were predictably ineffective and by the time he decided to get treatment (literally the best money could buy) it was too late to get rid of the cancer entirely and he eventually died.

      Your body can fight off cancer naturally, but when it does it does so early. When you get diagnosed with cancer it's because your body wasn't able to kill it, and without treatment, and in that case the earlier you kill it the better. And without treatment the natural progression is you dying.

      • Worse- while committing long-form holistic suicide, he wasted a fucking donor liver. Seriously, fuck that piece of shit.
        • Being 100% serious, Steve Jobs is one of the primary reasons why I have never owned an Apple computer, and never will.

          Incidentally my last 4 cars have also been Fords, because they didn't take government bailout money when Government Motors did. Will never buy another GM car either.

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      Had a colleague whose brother tried for a longshot treatment for a late detected colon cancer 10 years prior with a poor prognosis and watched his brother suffer as he dies.

      So when he got a much more early detected much more treatable cancer with an over 90% success rate for treatment... He said no, he won't suffer like his brother and instead try "home remedies" instead. So he let the generally treatable cancer kill him.

      Just worth noting that circumstances vary wildly case to case, and generally the medica

      • Is pancreatic cancer even related to colon cancer? If he made the determination based on a cancer with a totally different pathology then I guess he wasn't that smart. Or he found out money doesn't really make life that happy and wanted to die. From what I have heard about how he treated people, it seems like he may have been chronically unhappy.
        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          Note I spoke of a colleague, not Steve Jobs.

          Yes, he also went the 'home remedy' route but his was a different cancer. His relationship with medicine was fouled by an emotional experience with his brother where he felt the medical establishment betrayed him by torturing him with treatments until he died. Even as he rationally admitted his brother was told up front the treatments had low chance of success, he emotionally seemed to think it was nothing but painful false hope.

    • Re:Some thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TGK ( 262438 ) on Monday August 18, 2025 @11:30AM (#65597410) Homepage Journal

      Pediatric cancer survivor and long-time pediatric oncology caregiver/volunteer checking in. I see this sentiment a lot from people outside of the cancer community and, I get it: chemotherapy looks brutal because it _is_ brutal.

      But you need to understand what "letting things progress naturally" means.

      Cancer is uncontrolled cell growth. If you're LUCKY "naturally" means that some gnarly tumor in your brain causes progressively erases you from your own mind over the course of a couple months. If you're unlucky, it means that tiny tumors grow in all of your various vital organs, slowly choking off your body's ability to manage its basic processes over the course of years. If you're VERY unlucky, you end up with something like an aggressive leukemia which causes your bone-marrow to grow so fast that your bones POP.

      These are not fun ways to go.

      The nice thing about the treatment killing you is that, more often than not, it means that you suffer some kind of immune system collapse and an opportunistic bacteria or virus wipes you out over the course of a couple of days. It's not a merciful end but it's often more merciful than what cancer has in store for you.

      All I'm saying is... don't write off treatment until you have a good sense of what the alternative is.

      • This is why I keep around one of those drinks you only get to taste once, 00 buck.

      • Pediatric cancer survivor and long-time pediatric oncology caregiver/volunteer checking in. I see this sentiment a lot from people outside of the cancer community and, I get it: chemotherapy looks brutal because it _is_ brutal.

        But you need to understand what "letting things progress naturally" means.

        My father died from lung cancer. Combination of decades of smoking and working with a lot of asbestos when he was younger. He called it drowning in slow motion He decided to let it go. Pain killers and didn't take long took him out in a month, when he decided enough was enough as opposed an outside chance of 5 more years drowning. At 85, what is the awesomeness of life that has people want to die from the same process just prolonged?

        A brother of the wife's co - worker hung on hard, he did not want to die

        • by skam240 ( 789197 )

          The biggest benefit here isn't to prolong the bad final stages of cancer, most would choose not to take these drugs at that point. The idea is to take this stuff before symptoms or when symptoms are minimal to prolong THAT part before things get bad.

          Not sure why you always characterize stuff like this as prolonging suffering.

    • by eepok ( 545733 )

      That's not unreasonable. With our current technology, medicine, and financial system, fighting cancer as hard as is necessary to have a shot at winning is both painful and ruinously expensive.

      If you have a reason to fight, you have a chance to win. If you don't, you don't need to fight.

  • About done (Score:5, Interesting)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Monday August 18, 2025 @08:13AM (#65596962)

    Diagnosed at stage 4 at age 51. Told probably dead in 3 years or less. 91% of being dead within 5 years.

    They were fairly accurate. It's now 3 years later and I am about done. Currently not in treatment.

    They're out of options, other than phase 1 clinical trials and more of the same chemotherapy that has already failed (not to mention beat the shit out of me). I am in so much daily pain and misery that I am about done. I've been holding on for the sake of my now 9 year old child, but I just don't know how much longer I can do it.

    I'm certainly going to be dead soon. The only question is whether I manage to take care of it myself before the cancer does it for me.

    • Have you looked into the metabolic theory of cancer? If not then I'd suggest giving that a look. The tl;dr for that would be to do the Carnivore Diet which likely slows down the cancer. Then you get a prescription for a shot that helps your body kill the now starving cancer cells (forget the name, a search on the theory should find it). Basically most cancers love and run off glucose. Your body can run off glucose or ketones (technically you use both but one will be significantly higher than the other)

      • Why on earth would regular cells be able to metabolize ketones, and not cancer cells?
        I suppose if a specific cancer lineage had a broken citric acid cycle, it could be starved by ketosis, but I can't see how that could become a theory of "cancer in general".
        • Curing or preventing cancer via diet is a modern magical thinking to give folks the feeling of control over the risk of something horrible like cancer. Which isn't to say some life style choices or diets aren't better than others at mitigating cancer risk, but you're still one stray interstellar particle away from getting cancer even if you're an ironman athlete that only eats tallow from the purified remains of other ironman athletes mixed with kale. But you'll feel better eating better, which isn't a ba
        • Don't bother arguing with it just let the mods mod it down.
        • by kackle ( 910159 )
          I know little about the topic, but a man won a nobel [wikipedia.org] for the glucose concept.
    • Don't throw in the towel. Plenty of things you can try. I think everyone's cancer is unique but they share similarities. On average, 4-5 driver mutations with some having as few as 2-3. I would start with reading this and go off figure 2 for your own cancer. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

      Then try and find various substances/plants etc on google scholar that act upon the pathways of your cancer that are corrupted. There can be underlying problems that act in synergy to overcome the various overlapped re

    • Well, I will miss you.
    • I'm sorry for your situation. I certainly cannot imagine what you are going through. At the risk of sounding impertinent --you have most certainly searched areound for the best possible treatment-- I'll share with you an article that sounded like science fiction to me, but that is a real thing: Medicine Spares Cancer Patients From Grisly Surgeries and Harsh Therapies [nytimes.com]

      This is my summary:

      "Immunotherapy is a treatment that until now has been used as part of a suite of tools to attack cancer. Basically, it's

    • I'm really sorry to hear that. We have had many interesting conversations over the years. I will miss you.

    • You guys are very kind. Thank you.

    • by kbahey ( 102895 )

      I am sorry to hear that, and deeply sympathize.

      I am curious to know what kind of cancer (their are about 200 different types, with VERY different outcomes), and what stage it was when it was discovered.

      The reason I ask is that with screening, certain types of cancer are survivable (e.g. prostate, colon, some type of skin cancers, ...etc)
      Other types are killers no matter what, and it is only a matter of time (bile duct, pancreas, glioblastoma, ...etc)

    • As a parent I believe it will be my last service to show my kids how to die well. I guess we die as we lived. Live well brother.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      :~(

  • by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Monday August 18, 2025 @08:51AM (#65597032)

    ... than those who don't survive.

    • Maybe we all have cancer, or at least the early stages? With 25-35 trillion cells, what are the odds that what goes on to become cancer and kill us isn't present right now? Study said the seeds of cancer are sometimes sewn decades in advance. Its sort of amazing that one set of code on day 1 (inception) runs/keeps people alive for a hundred years. Its only after a relentless onslaught of viruses, toxins, emotional stress, lack of vitamins/nutrients, that eventually it all breaks down. That's with most of it
      • discoveries that common viruses can lead to cancer.

        Hasn't this been known an accepted already? We got the HPV vaccine in 2006 that has reduced the rate of cervical cancers for all people who receive it, mean and women.

      • If we can figure out the root causes,

        We already know that the root cause is DNA damage/corruption. This happens naturally either from local, naturally occurring radioactivity or from cosmic rays: one muon passes through every cubic centimetre of your body every second, as well as from naturally occurring viruses.

        For viruses not only has western medicine listened but it has developed a vaccine for HPV which is the leading cause of cervical cancer. This is now administered to girls in school, at least here in Canada. As for natural radiation

    • Sounds like Pharma is investing in prolonging customers while funding cures just to slow down cures?

      We all know it's best for business to mitigate rather than solve.

    • And I think you might have done it on purpose.

      So in English we often leave certain things unsaid that can be inferred from context.

      In this case the thing on said is that cancer survivors are living longer than previous cancer survivors at the same stage in treatment.

      I.e if you are diagnosed and expected to live for 3 years you might end up making it for six or even 10 or 20.
  • And the big beautiful bill...

    Bare minimum it cuts 800 billion out of Medicaid.

    It also removes the affordable Care act subsidies.

    Finally it triggers a 2014 law that will cut 1 trillion dollars from Medicare.

    Also we are going to double the price of medicine because of tariffs.

    The medicine that is keeping you alive is going to become unaffordable. People will mortgage their houses and the bank will take the house. Then it's game over.

    It doesn't matter if the technology exists if you can
  • Raises hand.
     
    Twice over

    • by Megane ( 129182 )
      I'm a twice too. Kidney cancer, found by accident after a kidney stone. Would have probably killed me in 3 or 4 years. Kidney removed and life went on. Ten years later, the other kidney, also found by accident after prostate trouble. On the back of the kidney, so needed a urology surgeon who had practice in upside-down microsurgery taking five hours to snip it off, but it appears to be successful. That was a year ago, and some weight loss after surgery (that I was completely happy with) is now gone, but it

And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones

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