Curbing tobacco use and taking other steps to eliminate
some of the most common risk factors for cancer could
save millions of lives over the next few decades,
health officials said.
Tobacco alone is predicted to kill a billion people
this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th
century, if current trends hold.
"In all of world history, this is the largest train
wreck not waiting to happen," said John Seffrin, chief
executive officer of the American
Cancer Society.
Reducing tobacco use would have the single largest
effect on global cancer rates, Seffrin and other health
officials said Monday in unveiling two reference guides
that chart global tobacco use and cancer.
Changing diets to contain fewer saturated fats and
more fruits and vegetables, as well as reducing infection
by cancer-causing viruses and bacteria, could also
cut rates dramatically, they said.
"We know with cancer, if we take action now, we can
save 2 million lives a year by 2020 and 6.5 million
by 2040," said Dr. Judith Mackay, a
World Health Organization senior policy adviser.
Today, tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths,
or 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year, according
to the new Cancer Atlas. When deaths from tobacco-related
cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases are included,
the yearly death toll rises to nearly 5 million and
it's expected to keep going up.
An estimated 1.25 billion men and women currently
smoke cigarettes, and more than half of them will
die from the habit, according to the newly issued
second edition of the Tobacco Atlas.
The two atlases were released Monday at an International
Union Against Cancer conference. The two statistics-packed
guides are meant as reference guides for doctors,
politicians, academics, students and attorneys who
work on cancer and tobacco control.
Lung cancer remains the major illness among the 10.9
million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year, according
to the Cancer Atlas. And it is not likely to be bumped
from its perch: In countries like China, where 300
million men now smoke, lung cancer could eventually
kill a million smokers a year, Seffrin said.
The authors and researchers responsible for the atlases
fear that a reduction in the global prevalence of
smoking would do little to curb what they called the
"tobacco epidemic."
"Even if smoking rates decline worldwide, there will
be a constant or even slightly increasing number of
smokers due to population increases," said Michael
Eriksen, director of the Institute of Public Health
at Georgia State University.
In 2002, besides the nearly 11 million new cancer
cases worldwide, there were nearly 7 million cancer
deaths. By 2020, officials anticipate there will be
16 million new cases a year and 10 million deaths.
An estimated 70 percent of those deaths will occur
in developing countries, according to the Cancer Atlas.
The number of new cases is largely the result of the
increasing proportion of older people in the world.
The risk of developing cancer is higher in the developed
world, according to the Cancer Atlas. In the United
States, for instance, the probability someone will
develop cancer by age 65 is nearly 18 percent. In
Oman, the probability is just shy of 6 percent. Still,
cancers in developing countries are more often fatal.
The American Cancer Society published the two atlases
with help from the International Union Against Cancer,
WHO and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
English, French and Spanish editions are now available;
Chinese language versions are due later this year.
