The science and medical response to activists claims that drinking water, weedkillers, and food coloring are killing people is to ask, where are the dead bodies?

They were there because those don't cause cancer, any more than manufacturing a PM2.5 air quality standard 30 years ago saves any lives, because they were never causing deaths.

Instead, people are surviving better than ever, thanks to improvements in diagnosis. Cancer survivors now number 18.6 million and is on its way to 22 million by 2035, according to the Cancer Treatment and Survivorship Statistics, 2025, report. The data are from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registries, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Program of Cancer Registries and National Center for Health Statistics, the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, and the U.S. Census Bureau. 

The three most prevalent cancers are prostate (3,552,460), melanoma of the skin (816,580), and colorectal (729,550) among males and breast (4,305,570), uterine corpus (945,540), and thyroid (859,890) among females.

Just over half (51%) of survivors were diagnosed within the past 10 years, and nearly four out of five (79%) survivors were aged 60 years and older. The number of female breast cancer survivors is projected to reach 5.3 million by January 1, 2035 – an increase of one million women from 2025, marking the largest projected growth among the top 10 most prevalent cancers.

There are social differences as well. People who refuse to opt into health insurance get diagnosed with stage I colorectal cancer have lower five-year survival rates than and black people report trusting doctors less. Those with stage I‐II lung cancer were less likely to undergo surgery than their White counterparts (47% vs. 52%). Disparities for rectal cancerare even higher, with 39% of Black people with stage I disease undergoing surgery compared to 64% of their White counterparts

Cancer can never be stopped completely, of course, but not smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or getting obese push the increased risk into old age. And survivors have to navigate long-term effects of treatment, financial hardship, and fear of recurrence.

But early detection remains key to improving outcomes for a cancer diagnosis that becomes increaasingly likely over age 60.