Health Stats & Trends

Please note that this section contains my personal notes from my readings on this topic.

If you are male in this country, the American Cancer Society says that you have a 47% chance of getting cancer. If you are female, you have a 38% lifetime risk of developing cancer. The rates at which we die from cancer are among the highest in the world, and it has been getting worse. Despite thirty years of the massively funded War on Cancer, we have made little progress.

Contrary to what many believe, cancer is not a natural event. Adopting a healthy diet and lifestyle can prevent the majority of cancers in the United States. Old age can and should be graceful and peaceful.

–- The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 17

Adverse Drug Effects

Even with the use of approved medicines and correct medication procedures, over 100,000 people die every year from unintended reactions to the “medicine” that is supposed to be reviving their health. Based on the analysis of 39 separate studies, almost 7% (one out of fifteen) of all hospitalized patients were found to have experienced a serious adverse drug reaction, one that “requires hospitalization, prolongs hospitalization, is permanently disabling or results in death. These are people who took their medicine as directed. This number does not include the tens of thousands of people who suffer from the incorrect administration and use of these drugs. Nor does it include adverse drug events that are labeled “possible” effects, or drugs that do not accomplish their intended goal. In other words, one of fifteen is a conservative number.

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; pages 16 – 17

Autoimmune Diseases

“A quarter million people in the U.S. are diagnosed with one of the forty separate autoimmune diseases each year. Women are 2.7 times more likely to be afflicted than are men. About 3% of Americans (one in every thirty-one people) have an autoimmune disease, a staggering total of 8.5 million people; some people put the total at as many as 12-13 million people.”

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 183

Cancer

• Cancer incidence rates dropped by 1.3% per year from 2000 to 2006 in men and 0.5% per year from 1998 to 2006 in women. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

• Cancer death rates decreased 2% per year from 2001 to 2006 in men and 1.5% per year from 2002 to 2006 in women. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

• Death rates have continued to drop in all four major cancer sites in men and in women, except for lung cancer in women, where rates have stabilized since 2003 after increasing for several decades. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

• Lung cancer rates in men have been dropping by 1.8% per year since 1991. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

• Colorectal cancer rates have dropped by 3% per year from 1998 through 2006 in men and by 2.2% per year in women. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

• Among women, lung cancer is expected to account for 26% of all cancer deaths in 2010. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

• Among children aged one to 14 in the United States, cancer is the second leading cause of death, after accidents. However, the five-year survival rate for children with any cancer improved from 58% for those diagnosed in 1975-1977 to 81% for those diagnosed in 1999-2005. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

The American Cancer Society’s Jemal said if more people quit smoking, were screened for cancers and had better access to care, many more lives would be saved, above and beyond the more than 700,000 lives noted in the report. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

“Roughly half a million Americans this year will go to the doctor’s office and be told that they have cancer of the breast, prostate or large bowel. People who get one of these cancers represent 40% of all new cancer patients.”

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 181

Testicular Cancer. At its current pace, the incidence of testicular cancer is doubling about every one and a half generations (39 years). In the U.S., the incidence of testicular cancer rose 41.5% between 1973 and 1996, an average of 1.8% per year. While rates of testicular cancer continue to drop among older men, testicular cancer remains the most common cancer among young men, with the highest rates of diagnosis among men between the ages of 30 and 34. PFC Health Concerns by EWG (April 3, 2003)
Prostate Cancer. Prostate cancer rose 4.4% a year between 1973 and 1992, or more than a doubling of risk in a generation. PFC Health Concerns by EWG (April 3, 2003)
Worker studies show increased rates of developing and dying of certain cancers. 3M workers exposed to high levels of fluorochemicals like PFOA appear to be at higher risks for cancers of the male reproductive system… PFC Health Concerns by EWG (April 3, 2003)

Hypothyroidism. In 11 studies conducted between 1978 and 2002, scientists have documented damage to the thyroid glad following exposure to PFOA and chemicals that break down into PFOA, in monkeys and other animals… Thyroid cancer and hypothyroidism are current human health concerns. An estimated 10 million people in the US have hypothyroidism. PFC Health Concerns by EWG (April 3, 2003)

Breast Cancer

Breast cancer rates dropped 2% per year from 1999 to 2006 and 6% from 2002 to 2003, but from 2003 to 2006 the incidence rate leveled off. (Source: From “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Drop“; 2010 July 9; USA Today, from Cancer Statistics 2010, which was published online in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians)

One out of eight American women will be diagnosed with this disease during their lifetimes — one of the highest rates in the world.

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 159

Rates of breast cancer deaths (in the 50- to- 70 age range) range widely from:
- 3.4 per 100,000 in Gambia to 10 per 100,000 in rural China;
- 20 per 100,000 in India;
- 90 per 100,000 in the United States; and,
- 120 per 100,000 in the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Early puberty is strongly associated with breast cancer, and the occurrence of breast cancer is three times higher in women who started puberty before age twelve.

– Disease-Proof Your Child (2005) by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.; pages 89 – 93

Among girls born today, one in eight is expected to get breast cancer and one in 32 is expected to die from it. Breast cancer in women increased an average of 1.1% per year between 1992 and 1999. Among those 65 and younger, breast cancer incidence rose 1.4% per year. If these trends continue, the granddaughters of today’s young women could face a 1 in 4 chance of developing breast cancer.

– PFC Health Concerns by EWG (April 3, 2003)

Large Bowel Cancer (including colon and rectum)

“Because colon and rectal cancers are both cancers of the large bowel, and because of their other similarities, they often are grouped together under the term colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer is the forth most common cancer worldwide, in terms of overall mortality. It is the second most common in the United States, with 6% of Americans getting the cancer during their lifetime. Some even claim that, by age seventy, one-half of the population of “Westernized” countries will develop a tumor in the large bowel and 10% of these cases will progress to malignancy.”

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 168

Diabetes

In the eight years from 1990 to 1998, the incidence of diabetics increased 33%. Over 8% of American adults are diabetic, and over 150,000 young people have the disease. That translates to 16 million Americans. The scariest figure? One-third of those people with diabetes don’t yet know that they have it.

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 145

Almost all cases of diabetes are either Type 1 or Type 2. Type 1 develops in children and adolescents, and thus is sometimes referred to as juvenile-onset diabetes. This form accounts for 5% to 10% of all diabetes cases. Type 2, which accounts for 90% to 95% of all cases, used to occur primarily in adults age forty and up, and thus was called adult-onset diabetes. But because up to 45% of new diabetes cases in children are Type 2 diabetes, the age-specific names are being dropped, and the two forms of diabetes are simply referred to as Type 1 and Type 2.

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 145

Diabetes among people in their thirties has increased 70% in less than ten years.

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 14

Annual economic cost of diabetes: $98 billion.

– The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 15

Heart Disease

“About 50% of Americans die of heart attacks and strokes.”

– Disease-Proof Your Child (2005) by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.; page 9

The most pervasive killer in our culture is not obesity, diabetes, or cancer. It is heart disease. Heart disease will kill one out of every three Americans. According to the American Heart Association, over 60 million Americans can currently suffer from some form of cardiovascular disease, including high blood pressure, stroke and heart disease… The most dramatic recent finding is that heart disease can be prevented and even reversed by a healthy diet.

–- The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 15

During the Korean War, 30,000 American soldiers were killed in battle. At the end of the war, a landmark scientific study was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Military medical investigators had examined the hearts of 300 male soldiers killed in action in Korea. The soldiers, at an average age of twenty-two years, had never been diagnosed with heart problems. In dissecting these hearts, researchers found startling evidence of disease in an exceptional number of cases. Fully 77.3% of the hearts they examined had “gross evidence” of heart disease. (In this instance, “gross” means large.)

That number, 77.3%, is startling. Coming at a time when our number one killer was still shrouded in mystery, the research clearly demonstrated that heart disease develops over an entire lifetime… These soldiers were not couch-potato slouches; they were in top condition in the prime of their physical lives. Since that time, several other studies have confirmed that heart disease is pervasive in young Americans.

–- The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 112

Obesity

We are rapidly becoming the heaviest people on earth. Overweight Americans now significantly outnumber those who maintain a healthy weight. Our rates of obesity have been skyrocketing over the past several decades.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, almost a third of the adults twenty years of age and over in this country are obese.

–- The China Study (2006) by Dr. Campbell; page 13

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