Put This In Your Pipe & Smoke It: Cancer Getting Killed

The Wall Street Journal article shouted the good news: “Cancer Death Rate in U.S. Falls by Largest Yearly Amount on Record.” Apparently, “powerful new lung-cancer treatments helped propel overall declines,” by 2.4% between 2017 and 2018. According to the report published online in the CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the cancer mortality rate has “fallen 31% since its peak in 1991.

The cautionary note: Cancer remains the second leading cause of deaths in the U.S. after heart disease, “responsible for more than 599,000 deaths.” Largely because of continued cigarette smoking, lung cancer is still the disease’s biggest killer.

No wonder here. I witnessed my Mom’s horrible death from lung cancer, despite having quit the nasty addictive habit 20 years before her funeral. I still remember as a young boy in the 1950’s fetching 4 packs daily for my Mother with a note to the neighborhood grocer. Oh, everyone knew there was a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, they just didn’t talk much about it. An uncle lost a lung ala Actor John Wayne. Didn’t matter. He kept smoking until you know what. Still, back to the glorious news as I’m happy to report that two other close relatives SURVIVED recent bouts with different kinds of cancers. Put that in your pipe, cancer demon, & smoke it!

Davd Soul