WOW: Cancer Deaths Decline 27% over 25 Years.

Deaths from cancer dropped 27% over a quarter century, resulting in an estimated 2.6 million fewer cancer deaths during that period, according to a new report from researchers at the American Cancer Society.

For most of the 20th century, overall cancer deaths rose, driven mainly by men dying from lung cancer, researchers noted. But since the peak in 1991, the death rate has steadily dropped 1.5% a year through 2016, primarily because of long-running efforts to reduce smoking as well as advances in detection and treatment of cancer at earlier stages, when prognosis for recovery is generally better. . . .

Men had a 34% total decline in cancer mortality, compared with 24% for women, largely tracking lower trends in smoking. Lung-cancer incidence is declining twice as fast among men as women, which in part reflects that women historically took up smoking in large numbers later and were slower to quit.

Increasing obesity, however, may slow progress here.