CANCER is the second cause of death in the United States today, taking 260,000 lives a year. There are 500.000 newv cases diagnosed each year, and at any given time there are 700,000 persons under treatment for cancer in this country. The combined hospital bill alone for cancer patients is $300 million a year. and the total economic impact of the disease is $12 billion a year in lost goods and services. Statistical studies offer the conclusion that, if present trends continue, approximately 40 million persons now living wvill develop cancer during their lifetime, and 26 million will die of it. How has this trend developed, and how is it moving? In 1900 cancer was in seventh place on the mortality list, outranked in ascending order by accidents, nephritis, diarrhea, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and cardiovascular diseases. Now, it is outranked only by the cardiovascular complex. Because cancer tends to select its victims at the upper age levels, its increase during the last 60 years has been largely among people who have survived other disease hazards and arrived at the time of life for greatest risk to malignant attack. Some of the increase is justifiably attributed to better case finding and improved diagnosis. But there has also been an increase that is unaccouinted for, though nevertheless real, which amounts to at least 10 per cent. In the course of the general rise of cancer. there have also been some interesting and undoubtedly significant variations by specific sites. In the last 25 years, for instance, there has been a sixfold increase in lung cancer among males, a twofold increase in leukemias and other lymphomas, a 30 per cent decrease in the incidence of stomach cancer, and a decrease of 40 per cent in mortality from cancer of the uterus in white women and 25 per cent in Negro women. Happily, there has been a gradual improvement in the over-all cancer survival picture over the years. At the turn of the century a cancer victim had little hope of getting well. Twenty years ago one out of four was being saved. At the present time one out of three is being saved, and it has been said many times that we ought to be able to save half of all cases with what we know about cancer today. Several factors have contributed to this improvement. Better case finding and diagnosis, backed by professional and lay education and public health efforts, have had a lot to do with it, and these efforts should be continued and redoubled. But the one thing most responsible for increased survival of cancer patients is better treatment. A study covering a 17-year period conducted in Connecticut by the State Health Department and the National Cancer Institute shoNss that in the period from 1935 to 1951 the five-year survival rate increased from 19 to 25 per cent for males, and from 29 to 38 per cent for females. What is the scope of the present total