Medicine: The Politics of Cancer

Next to heart disease, cancer kills more Americans than any other ailment. Some 335,000 people, half of them under 55, will die of cancer this year in the U.S.; one out of every four Americans now living, some 52 million people, will contract the disease at some time during their lives. For many of those who do, the prognosis is poor. Doctors can often slow or even halt the progress of cancer by surgery, radiation and drugs; but, though researchers have uncovered many disparate clues (TIME, April 19), they do not yet understand the workings of most forms of the disease,...

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