Fight Colorectal Cancer shared a post on LinkedIn:
“When Science Tells Half-Truths, People Die
We’re entering a dangerous new chapter in the war on cancer. In an effort to challenge the status quo and question prevailing scientific evidence, a new generation of researchers, public figures, and armchair experts has started to downplay the growing threat of more than a dozen different cancers in increasingly younger patients.
The latest example of this came in the form of your special report, The Rise in Early-Onset Cancer in the US Population – More Apparent Than Real, which warns that rising rates of early-onset cancer are not a reflection of increased disease prevalence, but rather an epidemic of diagnosis.
The article, which has now been cited by The New York Times, NBC News, Vox and others, contends that much of the reported increase in early-onset cancers, including thyroid, anus, kidney, small intestine, colorectum, endometrium, pancreas and myeloma, is attributable to increased diagnostic scrutiny and overdiagnosis, rather than a real, clinically meaningful increase in disease.
While the premise reads on the surface like good news – we’re not really sicker, we’re just getting better at diagnosing sickness – it sets a dangerous precedent for how data and statistics can be used to misrepresent or downplay serious issues.
When the stories we tell about science drift from truth, lives are at stake. Socrates warned that wisdom begins with honesty; today, we risk betraying that by redefining what disease means and, in doing so, diminishing its human cost.
Because JAMA Internal Medicine carries enormous influence, its interpretations ripple far beyond academia, shaping media coverage, public perception, and ultimately, health policy. Yes, advances in technology and efforts to lower screening age guidelines have increased the number of people being tested and, consequently, the number of cancers detected. But that progress does not equal overdiagnosis, nor does it explain why so many young patients are still presenting with late-stage disease.
These trends mark progress, not exaggeration, a milestone in our ability to detect cancer earlier and intervene more effectively. According to the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Statistics 2025 report, the U.S. cancer mortality rate has fallen 34% since 1991, preventing roughly 4.5 million deaths. Yet even amid that success, the incidence of several cancers has risen sharply, especially among women and younger adults.
Colorectal cancer now ranks as the leading cause of cancer-related death for men under 50 and the second for women under 50. At the current pace, it will become the top cancer killer for all people aged 20 to 49 by 2030, despite the fact that 90% of these deaths are preventable. For younger patients, ‘early detection’ isn’t an abstract metric; it’s often the difference between surviving and dying because a guideline said they were too young to be screened.
These numbers matter because they reveal the complexity of understanding large-scale trends in disease across diverse populations, and the danger of making blanket claims about under-, over-, or misdiagnosis. Cancer prevalence is declining in some areas and rising in others. And despite remarkable advances in screening and early detection, too many people still delay or avoid care, allowing disease to progress. Holding two truths in tension, that screening finds more cancers and that more people are dying, is not a contradiction. It’s clarity.
The authors of the paper base their conclusion on mortality rates. They point to colorectal cancer, noting that while incidence has risen by about 2% per year since 2024, mortality has increased by only 0.5% per year. They argue that this gap between diagnosis and death suggests overdiagnosis, that many people were identified and treated for cancers that weren’t truly life-threatening simply because they didn’t die.
But numbers are not abstractions; they represent mothers, fathers, and friends whose diagnoses came too late or whose lives were cut short. To dismiss their experience as a statistical artifact is to strip meaning from their suffering, and from the urgency this crisis demands.
What’s missing from this logic is the concordant trend in improvements in colorectal cancer treatment, which has played a major role in reducing the number of cancer deaths following a diagnosis. The research also does not account for the global surge in early-onset colorectal cancer diagnoses, which are now rising in 27 of 50 countries, according to new research in The Lancet.
Similarly, research in the American Association for Cancer Research Journals confirms that rising incidence of 14 different types of cancer is not the result of over-diagnosis, but rather, they are cancer-specific and could include a combination of established and perhaps new etiologic factors, and increased detection.
While the authors and the journal deserve credit for adding nuance to the discussion of cancer trends, we must also reckon with the broader consequences of their conclusions. One analysis should not outweigh the lived experience of thousands of young patients confronting real, often deadly cancers. When headlines echo the idea that rising rates are simply the result of ‘overdiagnosis,’ they risk slowing screening, delaying diagnosis, and chilling innovation.
Especially now, as we face strained federal funding, politicized misinformation, and a growing culture of distrust, we cannot weaken our fight against cancer. We need to support prevention and early detection, ensure insurance coverage for evidence-based screening, and accelerate research into why younger generations face a higher risk. Patients under 50 deserve urgency, not complacency. As a cancer survivor and advocate, I am asking that truth, not comfort, guide our science.
About the author
Anjee Davis, MPPA, is the CEO of Fight Colorectal Cancer.”
Title: The Rise in Early-Onset Cancer in the US Population—More Apparent Than Real
Authors: Vishal R. Patel, Adewole S. Adamson, and H. Gilbert Welch.
You can read the Full Article in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Title: Trends in Cancer Incidence and Mortality Rates in Early-Onset and Older-Onset Age Groups in the United States, 2010–2019
Authors: Meredith S. Shiels, Anika T. Haque, Amy Berrington de González, M. Constanza Camargo, Megan A. Clarke, Brittny C. Davis Lynn, Eric A. Engels, Neal D. Freedman, Gretchen L. Gierach, Jonathan N. Hofmann, Rena R. Jones, Erikka Loftfield, Rashmi Sinha, Lindsay M. Morton, and Stephen J. Chanock.
You can read the Full Article in Cancer Discovery.
Title: Colorectal cancer incidence trends in younger versus older adults: an analysis of population-based cancer registry data
Authors: Hyuna Sung, Rebecca L Siegel, Mathieu Laversanne, Chenxi Jiang, Eileen Morgan, Mariam Zahwe, Yin Cao, Freddie Bray, and Ahmedin Jemal.
You can read the Full Article in The Lancet Oncology.
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