This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Anthony B. Miller, MB, FRCP

JAMA. 1994;271(6):468.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In this issue of THE JOURNAL, Davis et al¹ report on their analyses of US cancer data for 1973 through 1987 and conclude that increases in cancer have occurred that are not solely linked to aging of the population and smoking patterns. When interpreting the findings from their analyses we should bear in mind the following:

First, if the major cause of death declines (cardiovascular disease, the decline of which is one of the triumphs of this century), then other causes of death will increase proportionally. It is not clear that restricting attention to one raceage group (whites, aged 65 to 74 years, as in their Fig 1) will necessarily completely control for this phenomenon, especially the effect of competing causes of death.

See also p 431.

Second, categorizing smoking-related cancers as cancers of the mouth, larynx, lung, pharynx, and esophagus ignores those cancers of the bladder, kidney, pancreas, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, University of Toronto, Ontario.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A8 (Dr Miller).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?