This is not to say, as many antitechnology ideologues imply, that societal sufficiency causes cancer. It is to say that societal sufficiency provides a large proportion of the population with the opportunity to live long enough to develop cancer. In the U.S., death is close to 20 times more common in the first year of life than it is from ages one through four. The chance of dying then declines by half for children aged five to 14. Although, tragically, cancer accounts for more than 10 percent of all deaths among children, cancer deaths among children represent less than one percent of all cancer deaths.
Terminal cancers are predominantly diseases of middle-aged and elderly persons.
Cancer surfaces as an important cause of death in populations that have escaped other causes of death. Where many people die of cancer, many people are fortunate to live long lives. The pie chart in Figure 1 shows mortality in the U.S. for 1990, with slices indicating causes of death. In 1990 the two leading causes of death, heart disease and cancer, accounted for more than half of all U.S. deaths. Heart disease produced about 32 percent of all deaths, cancer about 25 percent and all other causes the remaining 43 percent .