Why have cancer deaths decreased so much over the last few decades?

That's a 25 to 30 percent decrease in mortality from cancer over the last 25 to 30 years. That's a big

number. That's a big leap. It's Monday August 5th and you're listening to

Science Friday. I'm Cyphra, producer D. Peter Schmidt. There's a word that you never want to hear in the doctor's office, it's cancer.

About 40% of us, though, will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during our lives, that's according to the National Institutes of Health.

But just in the last few decades, major progress has been made in the world of cancer treatment

and prevention.

And the breakthroughs made from the development of the MRNA COVID vaccines are bringing even more

promise for hard to treat cancers.

Here's guest host John Dankowski with a broad update about the progress that cancer

researchers have been making and what's on the horizon.

Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University.

He's also the author of the PILTER Prize winning book, The Emperor of All Maladies,

the biography of Cancer.

Dr. Mukherjee, welcome back to Science Friday.

So good to have you.

My pleasure, thank you for having me.

So I'm sure that you get this question a lot, to kick off our conversation why exactly are

cancers are so hard to treat compared to other diseases? Well cancers are as you just

pointed out is a word in the plural.

There's not one cancer but many cancer.

Many cancers, in fact, even if you look within one subtype of breast cancer,

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