HMM: Pancreatic Cancer Develops For 20 Years Before Killing. “Pancreatic cancer has long been viewed as a rapidly developing cancer because life expectancy from day of diagnosis is usually less than 3 years with 95% of those diagnosed dead within 5 years. But use of DNA sequencing technology has enabled researchers Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue, Bert Vogelstein, and evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak to determine that most pancreatic cancers [take] almost 20 years to develop enough to kill their victims. . . . Cancerous intestinal polyps are pretty easy to discover with colonoscopy. Unfortunately the pancreas isn’t as easy to inspect as the colon. But we need the ability to remove the pancreatic equivalents of colon polyps.”