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Cancer Facts
Cancer is a general term used for more than one hundred diseases with uncontrolled, abnormal growth of cells that can invade and destroy healthy tissues. Anyone can develop cancer, and chances are that you have had personal experience with cancer—that someone in your life, maybe even you, has been diagnosed with this disease. The lifetime risk of developing cancer is slightly less than one in two for men and slightly more than one in three for women.
The risk of being diagnosed increases with age, so most cases occur in adults who are middle aged or older. Approximately 76% of all cancers are diagnosed in persons over fifty-five. A growing and aging population means that about 1.4 million new cancer cases, excluding noninvasive forms of cancer, are expected to be diagnosed in 2006. The good news is that fewer than half of those diagnosed with cancer today will die of the disease, thanks to treatments that control many types of cancer.
Some individuals are actually completely cured and many more survive for years with a good quality of life. However, the death rate is still much too high. Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the U.S. accounting for 1 out of 4 deaths, or mort than 1500 people each day.
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