American Cancer Society researchers say that cancer is now the world’s leading economic killer as well as its likely top cause of death.
Their new report says that cancer costs more in productivity and lost life than AIDS, tuberculosis or other infectious diseases. Cancer’s economic impact was $895 billion in 2008, not counting treatment.
The cancer society wants more money spent on cancer and chronic diseases. The World Health Organization predicts cancer will pass heart disease this year as the leading cause of death.
In a separate article published online Monday by the British medical journal Lancet, Boston cancer scientists and advocates urged more money to fight cancer in poor countries. Harvard School of Public Health dean Julio Frank said only 5 percent of treatment and prevention money goes to countries that bear 80 percent of the disease.
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