Volume 1

Report to the President : a national program to conquer heart disease, cancer and stroke.

  • United States. President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke.
Date:
1964-1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report to the President : a national program to conquer heart disease, cancer and stroke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    occupation, geography, and other factors. It also varies dramatically with the passage of time. Within a single generation in the United States one form of cancer—carcinoma of the lung in men—has increased strikingly while another— stomach cancer in men—has declined sharply. Cancer Deaths Cancer is the cause of 16 percent of all deaths in the United States. It is by a wide margin our second greatest killer. In 1962, 278,562 Americans died of cancer; in 1963, the number was 285,362; in 1964, the number will exceed 300,000. These figures stand in sharp contrast to the situation in 1900, when only 3.7 percent of all deaths were attributed to cancer and when the disease stood far down on the list of causes of mortality. DEATHS FROM CANCER HAWAI DEATHS PER REGION or Pee He HH 8,175 16,470 18,845 23,743 25,470 32,412 36,866 59,336 64,045 The rise of cancer as a health menace can be charged in large part to the changing age composition of our population. Many more people are surviving the infectious diseases of youth and middle age only to succumb to the diseases of the more advanced years. 8 Yet cancer, like heart disease, is by no means reserved for the aged. In 1963,