A cancer diagnosis is never welcome news, but every new patient
hopes to hear these six words: "At least we caught it early."
Unfortunately, catching it early isn't as easy as it sounds and,
with a few exceptions, scientists acknowledge they haven't had
many breakthroughs in the search for safer and more effective
cancer screening techniques. That doesn't mean researchers
haven't been hard at work looking for better screenings that
rely less on finding tumors and more on finding molecules and
biomarkers that signal cancer is coming before it's had the
chance to take hold. Survival rates depend a lot on the type of
cancer a person gets, but for some very treatable cancers, like
breast cancer, the survival rate rises from 15% at stage 4 to
93% at stage 0. If we want to beat cancer we're going to need
better ways to find it sooner. Tell Health and Human Services
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to invest research dollars in early
detection. Dear Secretary Sebelius, We all know that the best
chance a person has to bea