a purple happy dance is in order...

Came into the office this morning, and found this in my e-mail!

Cancer deaths fall for first time

Thursday, February 9, 2006

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The war on cancer may have reached a dramatic
turning point: For the first time in more than 70 years, annual cancer deaths in
the United States have fallen.

The number of cancer deaths dropped to 556,902 in 2003, down from 557,271 the year before, according to a recently completed review of U.S. death certificates by the National Center for Health Statistics.

It's the first annual decrease in total cancer deaths since 1930, when nationwide data began to be compiled. ...

For more than a decade, health statisticians have charted annual drops of about 1 percent in the cancer death rate -- the calculated number of deaths per 100,000 people. But the actual number of cancer deaths still rose each year because the growth in total population outpaced the falling death rates.

"Finally, the declining rates have surpassed the increasing size of the population," said Rebecca Siegel, a Cancer Society epidemiologist.

Experts are attributing the success to declines in smoking, and the earlier detection and more effective treatment of tumors. Death rates have fallen for lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancer, according to American Cancer Society officials, who analyzed the federal death data. Those are the four most common cancers, which together account for 51 percent of all U.S. cancer deaths.

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Did you order your candy grams yet? :)