EDITORIAL

Cancer mortality

How much of the decrease in cancer death rates in the United States is attributable to reductions in tobacco smoking?

Michael J Thun and Ahmedin Jemal

Department of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Michael J Thun
MD, Department of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA 30229-4251, USA; mthun@cancer.org

---

Reductions in tobacco smoking are a major factor in the decrease in cancer mortality rates

---

Keywords: attributable mortality; cancer; smoking; tobacco

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It is difficult to quantify the benefits of large scale, preventive interventions taken in the past, because the size of the benefit depends on assumptions about what might have happened had there been no intervention. For example, if one wishes to measure how much of the decrease in cancer death rates in the United States is attributable to reductions in tobacco smoking, the most conservative approach is to consider only the time period during which cancer death rates actually decreased. This limits consideration to the observed decrease in overall cancer death rates that occurred among men (but not women) between 1991, the year when the age standardised cancer death rate peaked in the overall US population, and 2003, the most recent year for which final mortality data are currently available.¹ While it seems prudent to base the estimate only on observed data and only during the time period . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Lippman, S. M., Hawk, E. T. (2009). Cancer Prevention: From 1727 to Milestones of the Past 100 Years. Cancer Res. 69: 5269-5284 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Lippman, S. M. (2009). Cancer Prevention Research: Back to the Future. Cancer Prevention Research 2: 503-513 [Full Text]  
• Bubb, M. R., Lipfert, F. W., Pope, C. A. III, Ezzati, M., Dockery, D. W. (2009). Air Pollution and Life Expectancy. NEJM 360: 2032-2034 [Full Text]  
• Farley, T. A. (2009). Reforming Health Care or Reforming Health?. Am. J. Public Health 99: 588-590 [Full Text]  
• Jemal, A., Thun, M. J., Ries, L. A. G., Howe, H. L., Weir, H. K., Center, M. M., Ward, E., Wu, X.-C., Eheman, C., Anderson, R., Ajani, U. A., Kohler, B., Edwards, B. K. (2008). Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975-2005, Featuring Trends in Lung Cancer, Tobacco Use, and Tobacco Control. JNCI J Natl Cancer Inst 100: 1672-1694 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Frieden, T. R., Myers, J. E., Krauskopf, M. S., Farley, T. A. (2008). A Public Health Approach to Winning the War Against Cancer. The Oncologist 13: 1306-1313 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• DeLancey, J. O. L., Thun, M. J., Jemal, A., Ward, E. M. (2008). Recent Trends in Black-White Disparities in Cancer Mortality. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 17: 2908-2912 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Kinsey, T., Jemal, A., Liff, J., Ward, E., Thun, M. (2008). Secular Trends in Mortality From Common Cancers in the United States by Educational Attainment, 1993-2001. JNCI J Natl Cancer Inst 100: 1003-1012 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Mountzios, G., Planchard, D., Besse, B., Validire, P., Girard, P., Devisme, C., Dimopoulos, M.-A., Soria, J.-C., Fouret, P. (2008). Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Activation in Lung Adenocarcinoma: A Comparative Study between Ever Smokers and Never Smokers. Clin. Cancer Res. 14: 4096-4102 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Morgan, G. D., Backinger, C. L., Leischow, S. J. (2007). The Future of Tobacco-Control Research. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 16: 1077-1080 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Chapman, S. (2007). Risks of smoking: all done and dusted. BMJ 334: s16-s16 [Full Text]  

eLetters:

Read all eLetters

Errors in Table 1

Michael J. Thun, et al.

Tobacco Control Online, 1 Oct 2006 [Full text]