The War on Cancer: I Victory or Deadlock?

In the United States, the 'cancer establishment' has claimed victory in the war on cancer and used that claim to gain the support of the media, the public, and the government in order to obtain funding and to justify attacks on innovators. Critics have challenged the claims of victory and assert that those claims rest on statistical artifacts. This review is an examination of some of those statistical artifacts, measurement errors and violations of the canons of experimental design. Statistics showing improvements in cancer patient survival are exaggerated. Far from supporting survival statistics, the mortality and incidence statistics are badly biased, the distortions in incidence directly affect reported improvements in survival and directly impinge on many research studies. Statistical errors found in research reports include underreporting due to selection bias, overreporting of successes and inequitable treatment of treated as opposed to untreated cases. There are also instances of blatant statistical manipulation. The recent General Accounting Office Report on cancer assumes that improvement in treatment would support claims of improved survival, but the research which is supposed to establish treatment improvements also suffers from many weaknesses.An overall view of the situation suggests that critics who have largely dealt with isolated pieces of the problem have not yet fully expressed the extent of these statistical biases and research flaws or the magnitude of the failure of the war on cancer.