WHO study says when nations modernize, cancer follows.
The world is obsessed with creating an educated middle class with spendable income that further powers the emerging markets. Economists call this a perfect circle. But there's a dark side. We are now learning that this progress this comes with tremendous human costs.
"WHO estimates that worldwide cancer cases will rise from 14.2 million in 2012 to 22 million in less than two decades. Cancer currently is killing about 8.5 million people a year. That number will nearly double.
In contrast, cancer rates in developed nations are on the decline because of improved diagnostics and new treatments, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Developing countries will fuel the 55 percent increase with more than 60 percent of the world's cases. About 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths will occur in Africa, Asia and Central and South America.
Lung cancer is the main problem, accounting for more deaths than the next three cancers combined (colon, breast and prostate), according to the American Lung Association.
WHO says that at least half of this "imminent human disaster" can be prevented by changing dangerous lifestyles.
The Peoples Republic of China is the test tube. Some 281 million Chinese smoke cigarettes, and the number is rising, despite government efforts to curtail it, according to The New York Times. The Epidemiological Studies Unit at the University of Oxford found about 3,000 Chinese die of smoking-related diseases per day."
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