Farrelly Colin
Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
Geroscience. 2021 Jun;43(3):1229-1235. doi: 10.1007/s11357-021-00366-6. Epub 2021 Apr 15.
The year 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act of 1971 and President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on cancer". In 1971 cancer was the second leading cause of death in the USA, and today it is still the second leading cause of death with an estimated 606,520 Americans dying of cancer in the year 2020. The half a century campaign to eliminate cancer reveals at least two important public health lessons that must be heeded for the next 50 years of the war against the disease-(1) recognizing the limits of behaviour control and (2) recognizing the significance of rate (of ageing) control. These two lessons result in a somewhat paradoxical conclusion in that we must have both humility and ambition in our attitudes towards future preventative medicine for the world's ageing populations. Geroscience must become an integral part of public health if serious headway is to be made preventing not only cancer but most of the other chronic conditions of late life.
2021年是1971年《国家癌症法案》颁布50周年，也是理查德·尼克松总统宣布“向癌症宣战”50周年。1971年，癌症是美国第二大死因，如今它仍是第二大死因，据估计，2020年有606520名美国人死于癌症。这场为期半个世纪的消除癌症运动至少揭示了两条重要的公共卫生经验教训，在未来50年抗击这种疾病的斗争中必须加以重视——（1）认识到行为控制的局限性；（2）认识到（衰老）速率控制的重要性。这两条经验教训得出了一个有些矛盾的结论，即我们在对待全球老龄化人口未来预防医学的态度上，既必须谦逊又要有雄心壮志。如果要在预防癌症以及大多数其他晚年慢性疾病方面取得重大进展，老年科学必须成为公共卫生的一个组成部分。
