[robomartin]

If we were serious as a society about fighting this disease we would engineer an approach that guarantees early detection on as many people as possible. My guess, not having looked at numbers at all, is that the societal cost of late detection must be staggering. In other words, I am thinking --and I could be wrong-- that even if we provided annual checkups for free with a suitable technology, it might be cheaper than the devastation caused by cancer.

While not all cancers are the same, we cannot ignore the fact that there's a metabolic link to cancer onset and development. Our industrialized food system simply isn't healthy. I don't know how we do it, but there has to be a way to alter behavioral patterns (nutrition, exercise, visceral fat control, substance abuse, etc.) to actually protect people from both bad inputs and, frankly, themselves.

I don't say "themselves" in the sense of suggesting an overlord scenario. The reality is that most people are ill-informed and our industrialized food system is designed to be supremely addictive. Anyone who has battled with processed food understands just how difficult it can be not to consume it, both from a widespread availability perspective and what it does to your brain.

Despite the fact that treatment options and efficacy have improved, without fixing these factors it will be impossible to win this battle at scale.