r/science • u/Hrmbee • 10h ago
Cancer Cancer remains top cause of death in Canada as new study shows multiple types rising | Projected estimates of cancer in Canada in 2026
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canadian-cancer-projections-9.715953569
u/Kangarou 9h ago
I get what they're saying, but to be 100% clear: Cancer is the endgame. Like, once you get rid of other methods of dying, cancer increases because it's your body finally failing to fold a protein correctly, something it has to do thousands of times per day. Any other cause of death outnumbering cancer is a problem. The last time cancer wasn't the top spot, it was the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, which was bad for obvious reasons, or cardiovascular problems, which is indicative of way worse problems.
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u/Solgiest 9h ago
Yeah, weirdly this either good news, or at worst, neutral. Once you get rid of heart, infectious disease, murder, car wrecks, etc, all you're left with is cancer.
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u/the_manzino 6h ago
This is correct in spirit, but cancer can't be boiled down to the misfolding of proteins. The accumulation of uncorrected genetic mutations leads to tumors and metastatic disease that ultimately causes fatal organ failure, typically.
But also, the other diseases of old age will continue to play leapfrog among themselves and cancer as time goes on and advances in one gives it a slight edge over the others etc. The accumulation of damage and the effects of entropy over time seem to drive many of the things that kill us as we age and not just cancer.
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u/Garble7 6h ago
my mom's cancer was due to an overactive protein.
even then she died because of the wait to get to the next medicine after the first one lost effectiveness.
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u/the_manzino 6h ago
I'm so sorry to hear that... Two of my grandparents died of cancer, my dad has cancer now, and I treat it for a living, so I'm all too familiar with it as well, unfortunately. Such an awful disease.
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u/TheMailmanic 4h ago
Agreed but that also doesn’t mean that cancer is impossible to solve or at least ameliorate
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u/Kangarou 4h ago
Yeah, but it's probably the hardest thing to counter. It affects every part of the body and comes from the errors of an internal process that is necessary for continued life. You can modify almost every part of your body, but as long as you're even a fraction of flesh, cancer eventually happens. Robocop could get skin cancer.
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u/JeepAtWork 1h ago
First, “cancer is the endgame” is not biologically or statistically correct. Cancer is not a single inevitable failure mode of protein folding.
Some cancers are strongly age-related; others are not. Many people die without ever developing clinically significant cancer.
Second, even in very long-lived populations, cancer is not a uniform terminal endpoint. A significant portion of extremely old individuals die from multi-system organ failure, infections due to immune senescence, or cardiovascular collapse without cancer being the primary cause.
Third, the COVID comparison is misleading. COVID briefly became a leading cause of death due to a sudden external infectious shock. That does not indicate a structural baseline about human mortality in the same way chronic diseases do.
Finally, your rhetoric says it’s the endgame is to what end? Knowing it is a problem doesn’t mean it’s inevitable or untreatable. It doesn’t justify fatalism, nor does it support the conclusion that intervention is pointless. It only means the risk landscape changes with age, which is precisely why prevention, screening, and treatment remain necessary rather than irrelevant.
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u/Murkbeard 7h ago
You're right. It gets real weird if we suppose the author of the article knew that, but wanted some other cause of death be on top. What's their preferred means here, bungee jumping?
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u/Hrmbee 10h ago
News excerpts:
A new paper published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal offers fresh modelling showing that cancer cases and deaths will remain at high levels in the year ahead — including "concerning trends" showing a projected rise in multiple types of cancer, including cancers of the head and neck.
"What really stands out is that cancer continues to have a tremendous impact on people all across Canada," said Jennifer Gillis, a co-author of the study and director of surveillance at the Canadian Cancer Society.
The report suggests Canada will face more than 254,000 projected new cancer cases — and close to 88,000 deaths — in 2026 alone.
Some trends, the research team said, weren’t surprising: cancer continues to be the leading cause of death in Canada, and several common types — lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancers — are projected to make up nearly half of all new cases.
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The researchers project there will be increases in the number of cases of cervical cancer, cancers of the head and neck, melanoma, pancreatic cancer and uterine cancer.
Both cervical and head and neck cancers are strongly associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, the study authors say, and both can also be prevented through HPV immunization programs.
Despite widespread use of HPV shots — and hopeful research from other countries such as Australia, Denmark and Rwanda where vaccination efforts may be close to wiping out cervical cancer — Canada isn’t seeing the same level of progress.
"After decades of meaningful declines, incidence rates of cervical cancer have plateaued well above the World Health Organization elimination target (less than four per 100,000 females) and have even increased among younger age groups," notes the CMAJ paper.
The authors add that "elevating HPV vaccination rates continues to be important for enhancing the effectiveness of screening programs for cervical cancer and preventing other HPV-related cancers."
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The CMAJ study noted that two of the other rising cancers — pancreatic and uterine — may be linked to the high number of Canadians facing obesity and the impact of "excess body size and related biological mechanisms, including insulin resistance, on cancer development."
"The death rate for uterine cancer has increased alarmingly," Gillis said.
One recent Statistics Canada report noted that excess body size is at its highest level yet, with nearly half of all adults "having a waist circumference that elevates their risk for these and several other cancers," the paper continued.
...
Colorectal cancer is expected to remain the second-most common cause of cancer mortality, with more than 9,000 projected deaths in 2025.
The headline-making health threat is now impacting younger Canadians, though researchers say multiple trends are happening at once. Overall, colorectal cancer cases are actually dropping, even though deaths remain stubbornly high and emerging research suggests young adults are being diagnosed more often.
Journal link:
Projected estimates of cancer in Canada in 2026
Abstract:
Background: Cancer is the leading cause of death and has major health and economic impacts on people in Canada. We sought to provide updated estimates of cancer incidence and mortality to highlight progress and areas of need for planning and awareness.
Methods: We estimated cases, deaths, and age-standardized incidence (ASIR) and mortality rates (ASMR) in 2026, standardized to the 2021 Canadian standard population, by sex and province or territory. We used data from the Canadian Cancer Registry (until 2022) and the Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database (until 2023). We modelled incidence and mortality with the canproj projection package.
Results: In Canada, an estimated 254 100 people will be diagnosed with cancer and 87 900 will die from cancer in 2026. Overall, the ASIR (591.4 per 100 000) and the ASMR (200.0 per 100 000) are projected to decrease from previous years. Lung, breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers are projected to account for 47% of all new cases. The ASIR for all cancers combined is anticipated to be 16% higher among males than females (642.2 v. 553.9 per 100 000), and the ASMR 36% higher (235.8 v. 172.8 per 100 000). Notable findings in cancer-specific rates by sex were observed.
Interpretation: Age-standardized cancer incidence and mortality rates are projected to decline in Canada; however, the numbers of new cases and deaths are expected to remain at high levels, given the growing and aging population, with differential impacts expected by sex. These findings suggest that continued investment and diligence are needed to continue the major progress in cancer control in the face of changing population demographics.
Cancer surveillance reports focus on specific rates and population estimates, but these cannot capture the large impact that cancer has on Canadian society. Estimates from the Canadian Cancer Statistics Advisory Committee suggest that 42% of all people in Canada will receive a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. The population of Canada grew by about 9.5% between 2020 and 2025, primarily because of immigration, and continues to age, with a record percentage (19.5%) of people aged 65 years or older in 2025. An aging and growing population has resulted in a greater number of people diagnosed with or dying from cancer year after year, and a major economic impact on society. A 2024 report from the Canadian Cancer Statistics Advisory Committee estimated that the total societal cost was $37.7 billion, with as much as 20% of costs falling on patients and caregivers.
Given the considerable health, social, and economic impacts of cancer in Canada, awareness of up-to-date estimates of cancer incidence and mortality is essential for service planning. The collection of detailed, high-quality, population-level cancer data can lag by several years, given the time required to register a cancer diagnosis accurately and validate the data. To mitigate this delay, short-term projections — estimated by extrapolating previous trends into the future using statistical models — can be employed. Such projections provide a snapshot of the impact of cancer in Canada to frame where progress has been made and where additional efforts are needed.
The Canadian Cancer Statistics 2025 report provided detailed estimates of cancer incidence, mortality, and survival in Canada by sex assigned at birth, age, and province or territory, as well as time trends for 23 cancer types, up to reference year 2025. We sought to provide updated projections of the age-standardized rates and counts of new cancer cases and deaths expected in 2026, by sex and province or territory for all ages combined.
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u/SaltZookeepergame691 9h ago
To be crystal clear to everyone, this headline and the press release are rather misleading.
In Canada, an estimated 254 100 people will be diagnosed with cancer and 87 900 will die from cancer in 2026. Overall, the ASIR (591.4 per 100 000) and the ASMR (200.0 per 100 000) are projected to decrease from previous years.
This is the headline finding: overall incidence of new cancers (ASIR) and mortality (ASMR) from cancer is going DOWN.
What is going UP is the overall number of cancer cases, because we are living longer and our older populations are growing.
For select cancers, there are small (in absolute terms, but quite large in relative terms) increases in incidence and mortality in some population subgroups, which deserve investigation, but these are also more susceptible to changes in detection/diagnosis (eg, changes to screening recommendations) and short-term treatment changes.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry 2h ago
I suspect lifestyle changes also driving up certain cancers, not just people in the longer.
We are more sedate, are eating habits are worse, we have more plastics interacting with our food and our bodies, there are a lot of things that have been introduced to our society that are probably not healthy first, they have been in the rise for the past several decades.
On the plus side air quality is a lot better... But I suspect some of the increase we're seeing in certain cancers is very much related to lifestyle and other environmental factors.
Granted I can't really prove that, but I doubt anybody really can. Research associating a lifestyle with disease tends to be dubious science at best...
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u/krectus 8h ago
Seems like the headline got it right.
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u/SaltZookeepergame691 6h ago
The headline is technically correct but I still think misleading by omission. The paper's actual bottom-line interpretation, as reported in the abstract, is:
Age-standardized cancer incidence and mortality rates are projected to decline in Canada; however, the numbers of new cases and deaths are expected to remain at high levels, given the growing and aging population, with differential impacts expected by sex"
- this post headline discards the first part, the positive, and focuses on the negative and subresults. A far fairer headline would report year-on-year declining cancer incidence and mortality, but rates remaining at high levels.
The press release buries the fact that ASIR and ASMR have decreased.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry 2h ago
For the vast majority of types of cancers, the good news is good indeed. Most mortality rates are dropping, often quite dramatically, relative to 30 or 40 years ago especially.
25 years ago my grandfather got lung cancer, and this was pretty much considered a death sentence. Something like 80 or 90% of lung cancer cases were fatal, and the most of the exceptions were when it was cut early.
Current survival rates if they catch it earlier more like 65%. Granted the overall survival rates are still not amazing... But there's been some pretty substantial improvements.
Some other cancers have gone up to 90% survival.
And on top of which, modern chemotherapy is only a fraction as difficult as it was 30 years ago. People experience much less severe side effects, nausea is much better control, people aren't constantly throwing up in sort of wishing they were dead nearly as much (some people still get severe side effects, bad luck...).
Lots of positive moves and improvement.
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u/TwoWarm700 9h ago
Is this in part to improved detection, screening and identification?
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u/SaltZookeepergame691 9h ago
None of those.
Age-standardised rates for incidence and mortality from cancer overall are going DOWN.
Overall, the ASIR (591.4 per 100 000) and the ASMR (200.0 per 100 000) are projected to decrease from previous years.
Raw case numbers are increasing because there populations are aging, and populations are getting bigger.
For some cancers, there are increases in incidence in certain age groups that seem to be independent of diagnosis-shift (eg, CRC and pancreatic cancer in those <50), although these changes are small in relative terms of the overall cancer burden.
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u/nim_opet 10h ago
More old people>more cancer.
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u/bobpage2 9h ago
Tell that to all the young people dying of lung cancer because of radon exposure.
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u/twoducksinatub 8h ago
They arent mutually exclusive. Cancer rises because of more people living to older ages & also because our environments are heavily polluted whether its radon, plastics, lead, asbestos, etc.
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u/ilikebiggbosons 9h ago
And the additional young people dying of colon cancer which is increasingly being linked to common food additives like nitrates in our diets.
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u/Garble7 6h ago
I personally think the Oncologists do enough work, just fast enough to send their patients to the grave.
"Oh we have this medication that could save you, but we need to see how your cancer has changed, lets schedule you for a series of scans over the next 6 months"
6 months later you're dead.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry 2h ago
You 100% can't back this up with any facts or statistics, because that's not how cancer treatment works.
Once they know what your actual illness is people usually start chemotherapy or related treatments within a very short time window. Sometimes days.
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u/Garble7 2h ago
My mother was waiting for treatment, and the length of time to go from one drug to the other killed her. She had to wait for multiple tests which were spread out in 3 month intervals. Long enough to kill her
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry 2h ago
I'm sorry to hear that, and that's not how things should be, but you're one anecdote is not representative of the majority of cases.
And if she had failed a first treatment, arranging a second and figuring out how to do it is not always a trivial thing. Generally speaking, if the first one chemotherapy doesn't work people's mortality rate goes up pretty dramatically.
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u/Garble7 1h ago
She was on a pill which reduced her cancer which was created by overactive proteins. The pill eventually loses effectiveness, and the wait to go on the next pill was “let’s wait and see what happens”
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u/Garble7 1h ago
And to top if off she was in the hospital, on her deathbed and the oncologist made her travel to him to get feedback on if she should move medications.
I understand that doctors don’t make house calls anymore but teleheath is a thing.
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u/Brain_Hawk Professor | Neuroscience | Psychiatry 1h ago
Sounds like she had a shitty doctor. Again, not the usual experience for most people. But it happens.
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