And the hits keep coming. Here's a newer chart, from the non-political Cancer Research UK, showing data from 2002 (rather than 1996):
The numbers are a bit hard to eyeball, but it's reporting 15.8 (per 100,000) mortality in the US, and 17.8 in the UK. Moreover, you see the same story as the other graph: Very high incidence rate in America, but a mortality rate clustered around that of every other developed nation. Once again, the most likely conclusion is that bulk of the difference comes from America's aggressive screening procedures. Indeed, the organization explains:
Recent incidence rates are heavily influenced by the availability of PSA testing in the population and incidence varies far more than mortality. The highest incidence rates are in the United States and Sweden and the lowest rates are in China and India (Figure 1.2).7 The extremely high rate in the USA (125 per 100,000) is more than twice the reported rate in the UK (52 per 100,000). This is likely to be due to the high rates of PSA testing in the USA.
That's not a strike against the US. We have quite good prostate cancer treatment, and our mortality is better than most. But we don't have some sort of magical cure that the rest of the developed world missed. Which makes sense. After all, they read the exact same medical journal articles, do business with the exact same medical device companies, and purchase from the exact same pharmaceutical researchers.
