Even the change in cancer deaths per 100K UK population (an achievement in reducing 'early' death due to disease) can be attributed largely(?) to reduction in lung cancer, still mostly untreatable(?), resulting from middle-age men stopping smoking?
Whilst agreeing with most of what you write, can you assign the meaning to the mortality figures that you seem to? All people that that die have to die of something, it happens to be the cause that causes it first. Total causes always add up to 100%. So worsening mortality figures for a particular cause doesn't necessarily mean that we're going backwards in "curing" that disease, it simply means that the other stuff that used to kill people isn't doing so as much.
This is true. In the case of cancer, since we are stopping people from dying of other things rates of cancer would be increasing so it would be important to adjust for age in the comparisons.
Even the change in cancer deaths per 100K UK population (an achievement in reducing 'early' death due to disease) can be attributed largely(?) to reduction in lung cancer, still mostly untreatable(?), resulting from middle-age men stopping smoking?
This is an incredibly valuable article as a demonstration of how to read critically. Thank you for sharing it!
Whilst agreeing with most of what you write, can you assign the meaning to the mortality figures that you seem to? All people that that die have to die of something, it happens to be the cause that causes it first. Total causes always add up to 100%. So worsening mortality figures for a particular cause doesn't necessarily mean that we're going backwards in "curing" that disease, it simply means that the other stuff that used to kill people isn't doing so as much.
This is true. In the case of cancer, since we are stopping people from dying of other things rates of cancer would be increasing so it would be important to adjust for age in the comparisons.