The Rising Global Cancer Pandemic–Complete Book

Abstract

Cancer is the first or second cause of death in 134 countries, the leading cause of death in most high-income countries (i.e., 10 million deaths in 2020), and the leading cause of death by disease in American children. An estimated 19.3 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed across the world each year, and this number is expected to rise to 29 million by 2040. Most of the increase will occur in low- and middle-income countries, the countries least capable of confronting the cancer pandemic or affording expensive therapies. Cancer is unjust. Striking inequities can be traced within and between countries in cancer incidence and survival by race, ethnicity, and socio-economic-status. Survival is much higher among the wealthy than among the poor. In the US, outcomes are much more favorable among Whites than among Blacks and Latinos. Scientific contributions and ethical inquiry should help civil society in identifying and naming these inequities and, at the same time, recognizing successful strategies to promote health and articulate further constructive proposals. To examine the cancer pandemic and its inequities, this book—The Rising Global Cancer Pandemic: Health, Ethics, and Social Justice—gathers a selection of contributions presented, in an initial form, at the international conference hosted at Boston College, on October 2, 2021, by the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good in partnership with the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society and the Theology Department of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences. Both the conference and this volume also aim to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the National Cancer Act signed into law by the US President Richard M. Nixon on December 23, 1971.