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Cancer impacts not only the patient, but also his or her family
and community. In North America 1 in 3 individuals born during
the last decade will experience cancer at some point in their
lifetime. By the year 2000 the figure will be one in every two.
One in four to one in five North Americans will die of cancer.
Thus most individuals in North America have some experience of
the disease, if not personally, then in a family member, friend or
acquaintance.
In addition to its pervasive presence in the community, the
disease is widely feared the world over as synonymous with suffering
and death. Patients may be stigmatized and experience social
isolation and family tensions as well as inability to get insurance
or even job loss with economic dependence aggravated by high costs
of medical care if there is no health insurance. Progress in
controlling cancer has been frustratingly slow. Critics disagree
how resources should be distributed between treatment and prevention
or between research and putting existing knowledge into practice.
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