U.S. Childhood Cancer Death Rate Drops Sharply

Some good news. Hopefully we can learn from these numbers and build on it:

The cancer death rate for children in the United States has declined sharply — down 20 percent from 1990 to 2004 — thanks to better treatment of leukemia and other cancers, health officials said on Thursday.

Cancer stands as the leading disease-related cause of death for U.S. children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report. Better treatments are improving survival rates, the CDC said.

Now we have to work on prevention where we haven't had much success. It doesn't help that our diet as a society has worsened:

"It's not that we're having less cancer diagnosed. The incidence rates, the new-case rates are the same. It's just that we're getting better survival," the CDC's Dr. Lori Pollack said in a telephone interview.

There were 2,223 childhood cancer deaths in 2004, compared to 2,457 in 1990, the CDC said. The only greater causes of death for U.S. children were accidents, homicide and suicide.