Differences and Disparities in Cancer - Cancer Today

From the Editor-in-Chief

Differences and Disparities in Cancer

By William G. Nelson, MD, PhD

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.”
 –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Nearly 1.7 million new cancer cases and roughly 600,000 cancer deaths are expected in the U.S. in 2017. The good news is that this reflects an ongoing 
1.5 percent annual decline in cancer death rates, likely having resulted in over 2 million fewer cancer deaths from 1991 to 2014. The more troubling news is that cancer does not affect all equally. African-Americans have cancer death rates 15 percent higher than Caucasians. Asian/Pacific Islanders, American Indian/Alaska Natives and Hispanics have higher risks of cancers attributable to chronic infections. Finally, low-income people disproportionately die from cancer.

Every person is unique. Analyses of the more than 3.1 billion base pairs constituting the human genome illustrate this point. Although any two individuals have DNA sequences that are 99.9 percent identical, there are at least 3 million differences (1 in 1,000 base pairs). Even identical twins, though beginning life with identical genomes, grow to differ in DNA sequences. And of course, no two people, including identical twins, have the same life experiences.

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