The Metropolitan's Campaign Against Cancer

Many cases of degenerative disease have been prevented through the reduction in the frequency and severity of infections in childhood and early adult life; others have been postponed in their course through education in personal hygiene and in nutrition. Furthermore, Metropolitan nurses helped to carry many sufferers through acute phases of these chronic conditions, and such service on a large scale may well have had a salutary effect on the course of the death rate.

All in all, the diseases characteristic of late life constituted the major item in mor­tality, and their importance increased with time. With regard to cancer, another disease that claims its victims mainly after midlife, the report was not too encouraging around the early 1940s. The cost of this disease to the company, in terms of claim payments, was more than $25,000,000 a year or 14 percent of the total for all death claims in 1943.

In 1911 the proportion was only 6 percent. It is true that among white women there was a slight decline in the death rate from cancer, perhaps because some of the common forms of the disease in women are in relatively accessible sites, and thus amenable to surgery and X-ray or radium treatment. But among white men the death rate from this cause, as reported, showed an appreciable increase in between the years of 1910 and 1940.

The increase in reported deaths from this cause was in some degree misleading, and must not be taken to mean that the extensive campaign of research and public education on the subject of cancer was fruitless, however. In former years many deaths now reported as due to cancer would probably have been incorrectly diagnosed and attributed to some other cause.

In this way increased accuracy of diagnosis has had the effect of raising the reported cancer death rate. But until greater success crowns the efforts to gain an understanding of the cancer problem, the most effective measures are early diagnosis and early treatment. This message was a prominent item in the company's campaign against the disease.

In regards to cancer, a disease that claims its victims mainly after midlife, the report was not encouraging in the early 1940s. The cost of this disease to the company was more than $25,000,000 a year or 14 percent for all death claims in 1943.