Smart lifestyle regulations, options can protect health - Opinion - Wilkes-Barre Citizens Voice

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Perhaps the best part of the great news in vastly reduced cancer death rates is that the progress offers clues, across the realms of science, government and culture, on how to produce even more progress.

According to the American Cancer Society, the U.S. cancer death rate declined by 2.2% from 2016 through 2017. From 1991 through 2016, the cancer mortality rate fell by nearly 30%, affecting 3 million lives over that quarter century.

The first and, perhaps, most important lesson from the progress is that lifestyle choices matter. Lung cancer is the most prolific killer of all cancers, and there no is question that the ongoing decline in smoking — from 20.9% of adults in 2005 to 13.7% in 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has contributed mightily to the decline in lung cancer deaths. That has been driven by an effective long-term public education campaign and by aggressive anti-smoking government regulation that has changed the culture.

Along the same lines, deaths from skin cancer have fallen at an annual rate of 7% in recent years due largely to effective education on the dangers of extended, unprotected exposure to sunlight and tanning regimens.

Tragically, the opposite also proves the case. Mortality rates have increased for some cancers in which obesity often plays a role, including cancers of the pancreas, uterus and thyroid.

Science also has begun to gain an upper hand on some forms of cancer, through an array of treatments relying on gene-splicing, harnessing the body’s immune system in new ways and managing rather than radically attacking some types of tumors.

Each type of cancer is a distinct disease but, collectively, cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States behind heart disease. But the progress points the way to more: well-funded scientific research, education on smart lifestyle options to prevent cancer, and smart regulation to protect public health.