“'Cancer: we''re winning the war'”, proclaimed the Daily Mail UK in a full front-page feature on 4 July. This is obviously a little simplistic, but the report — from Sir Richard Doll and Sir Richard Peto (Cancer Research UK) — covered by this feature does show a dramatic drop in the number of deaths from lung cancer and breast cancer in the UK over the past 30 years.

In the 1960s, almost 250 men in every 100,000 per year in the UK died before the age of 70 from smoking-related diseases — today, the figure has more than halved to about 100 men per 100,000 per year. Richard Doll, who first discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s, said ““We''ve been enormously successful at persuading people to quit...As a result, the death rate from lung cancer is tumbling more quickly than anywhere else in the world”” (bbc.co.uk).

Deaths from breast cancer have also fallen significantly — 30% in the past decade. This decrease is due to improvements in both treatment and prevention of the disease — especially with the introduction of therapeutics such as tamoxifen — as well as increased early detection.

The two Sir Richards reported these results at the International Cancer Congress in Oslo in July, and were awarded the King Olav V''s prize for Outstanding Cancer Research (www.oslo2002.org). Incidentally, Norway banned tobacco advertising more thanover 25 years ago — it is one of the few European countries to take such a step — and the death rate from lung cancer is considerably lower than the average for all developed countries.