Smiler,

the numbers you quote on cancer may be correct but they are irrelevant for the argument. Crystal has said it already and I concur from another point of view. I regularly give the cancer data you have quoted to a research methodology class as a task to find out how they can be interpreted. The best of them come up with the more-cancer-because-we-get-older idea.

I then ask them at which data we should look to find out whether the age idea is correct. A good response is to look at cancer incidence separated by age groups. If you look at these data you can clearly see that for all (or nearly all, depending upon the country) age groups the incidence of cancer has decreased over the decades since Victoria was queen.

Though the age controlled cancer data have decreased, the overall data have increased. That is not easy to understand for people not trained how to read statistics. It is a variant of Simpson's paradox that has fooled you.

One more reason how you can be fooled: If you look at the data how many people have cancer at one point in time (it seems to me you quote these data the way you describe them) then each succes of medicine in prolonging life of cancer patients will increase the number of people having cancer at the same time for they will be part of the cancer statistics for a longer time.

You may argue against animal experimentation, but you should strike the cancer data argument from your arsenal. You only can fool the numerically challenged with it.

Wolfgang