Here’s some good health news to start off the new year — cancer deaths have declined by about 22% during the past two decades. According to The American Cancer Society (ACS), if rates continued as they had in the peak years, there would have been about 1.5 million more deaths due to cancer.
Smoking takes the blame for the high rate of lung cancer deaths during those peak years. Fortunately, fewer of us are smoking these days. For men, death due to lung cancer decreased 36% between 1990 and 2011. For women, lung cancer deaths decreased by 11% between 2002 and 2011.
