One of the tricky things about historical demography/epidemiology is
that surveillance methods and reporting have improved drastically in
the past decades, so sometimes incidence in the past is
underreported. Concurrently, the number of environmental hazards
caused by urbanization/chemical manufacturing, etc., have also
increased, while others have declined (particularly in the workplace,
thanks to OSHA, tho that agency is now a shell of itself). I
think it is hard to make a claim for a straight, easily discernible
trend either way -- plus you have to distinguish among types of cancers.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/8/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Doug Henwood</b> <<a href="mailto:dhenwood@panix.com">dhenwood@panix.com
</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>On Aug 8, 2006, at 4:10 PM, Colin Brace wrote:<br><br>> Your assertion that "cancers take a long time to develop" does not
<br>> gibe with the veritable plague of childhood cancers and breast cancers<br>> among middle-aged women these days.<br><br>According to this <<a href="http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2003/">http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2003/
</a><br>results_merged/topic_inc_mor_trends.pdf>, cancer mortality rates have<br>been declining among those 64 and under in the US.<br><br>Doug<br>___________________________________<br><a href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk">
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a><br></blockquote></div><br>