For cancer patients, the number of deaths which can be ascribed to cancer and the age of the patients at death are the two most important factors. Across the years, strongly contrasting periods can be discerned. Sometimes the outcome for patients changes dramatically over a limited time-span, as was the case for cancers in young people between 1965 and 1975. At other times, the clinical picture seems to stagnate for decades. This is in accordance with Thomas Kuhn's view of history.
Society changes from one period to another, and people with it.
Here we will not discuss the role of religious beliefs, but no-one can deny that the present climate of materialism has a certain mystic element. This includes the worship of technical devices coupled with a faith in science as being able to embrace all knowledge. However, we will concentrate on scientific problems and the temptations of dogmatism. We will see that in three separate fields the same intransigence and determination to direct the distribution of resources towards a single ideology leaves no room for alternative approaches. The horizons of the new eugenic era are theoretically unlimited.