- One in 3 people will contract cancer, and one in 4 will die from the disease.
- Cancer accounted for 30% of all deaths in men and 25% in women.
- From mid 20th century, the overall cancer incidence has increased by 44%; breast cancer and male colon cancer by 60%; testis, prostate and kidney by 100%; malignant melanoma, multiple myeloma and some lymphomas, by over 100%.
- Cancers are primarily an environmental disease with 90-95 percent of cases due to lifestyle and environmental factors and 5-10 percent due to genetics.
- The estimated annual cost of cancer to the United States, is approximately 2% of the GNP.
- For the majority of cancers, a higher proportion of females than males survived for at least 5 years after diagnosis.
- Common environmental factors leading to cancer death include: tobacco (25-30 percent), diet and obesity (30-35 percent), infections (15-20 percent), radiation, stress, lack of physical activity, environmental pollutants.
- Particular dietary practices often explain differences in cancer incidence in different countries (e.g. gastric cancer is more common in Japan, while colon cancer is more common in the United States.
- Some 75% of all cancers develop in people over 55.
- Malignant tumors (cancers) are usually named using -carcinoma, -sarcoma or -blastoma as a suffix, with the Latin or Greek word for the organ of origin as the root. For instance, a cancer of the liver is called hepatocarcinoma; a cancer of the fat cells is called liposarcoma.
Fast facts about Cancer
