Environmental Research Foundation . . P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 . . Subscriptions are free. To subscribe, E-mail the words . .
Cancer research is an expensive and fiercely competitive business.
As with all scientific research, in cancer research the questions you ask will limit the kinds of answers you can get. In addition, your perception of any problem can be affected by the way you express or display your answers. For example, incidence of breast cancer is decreasing among women younger than 50 but increasing among women older than 50. So if you average women of all ages, you mask the effect in older women, allowing you to claim that the breast cancer picture doesn't look so bad. In the U.S. and elsewhere, breast cancer is one of the most rapidly increasing cancers.