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ASCO Showcases Progress against Cancer

Jun 23, 2011

To demonstrate the value of thenation’s clinical cancer research systemand the urgent need to strengthen andsupport clinical trials, a new ASCO websitehighlights the progress made inclinical cancer research since the signingof the National Cancer Act in 1971.

The new website, CancerProgress.Net, includes a multimedia timelineof the important progress in cancertreatment over the past four decades.CancerProgress.Net is the first data-rich,interactive resource of its type,providing a visual history of advancesin cancer treatment and prevention.

Over the past 40 years, major milestoneshave been reached in everyarea of cancer care: prevention,screening, chemotherapy, surgery,radiation, and—increasingly—molecularlytargeted treatments. At the sametime, better ways of managing nausea,pain, and other side effects areenabling patients to live better, morefulfilling lives.

As a result of the U.S. investment inclinical cancer research, more peopleare surviving cancer than ever before:
  • Two out of three people live at leastfive years after a cancer diagnosis,up from one out of two in the 1970s.
  • The U.S. cancer death rate hasdropped 16% since the early 1990s.
  • Five-year survival rates for breastcancer, testicular cancer, and childhoodleukemia are now over 90%.
“Looking for progress in cancer canfeel ‘like watching the hands of aclock’ . . . But things are definitely movingin the right direction,” said ASCOCEO Allen S. Lichter, MD, in a 2011 Sciencearticle, “Cancer Research and the$90 Billion Metaphor.”

For the nearly 12 million cancer survivorsacross the United States, thisinvestment has been a foundation ofhope, promise, and progress in thefight to decrease the burden of cancer.

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