[ti:American Cancer Society Reports Largest Ever Drop in US Cancer Deaths] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:01.92]Researchers have reported the largest-ever single-year drop in cancer death rates in the United States. [00:11.64]The rate of deaths from cancer fell 2.2 percent from 2016 to 2017. [00:21.92]That is the largest drop since record-keeping began in 1930. [00:28.44]The information comes from a new report by the American Cancer Society. [00:34.52]The group announced the report's findings Wednesday. [00:38.72]The Cancer Society says that overall death rates from cancer [00:44.36]have fallen about 1.5 percent each year since 1991. [00:52.40]Better treatments for lung cancer are part of the reason for the falling numbers, [00:58.60]said Rebecca Siegel. She was the lead writer of the report. [01:04.60]"Lung cancer has been the most common cause of cancer death in the United States, [01:08.40]and now...we have better therapies for our patients and ... [01:11.44]patients are living longer and better than ever before." [01:15.88]If deaths from lung cancer were not counted, the 2017 rate drop would only be 1.4 percent, Siegel added. [01:27.92]In addition to better treatments, fewer people are getting lung cancer because fewer people are smoking. [01:36.32]Improved treatments for lung cancer include the areas of surgery, scanning, and use of radiation. [01:45.96]There are also better drugs. [01:48.80]Genetic testing helps doctors choose the right drugs for the kind of cancer in a patient. [01:58.04]Doctor Jyoti Patel is a lung cancer expert with Northwestern University in Illinois. [02:07.00]She said new drugs that get the patient's own immune system [02:12.04]to fight the cancer could help make the death rate fall even more. [02:18.76]American Cancer Society researchers also found a large decrease [02:24.56]in the death rate from melanoma, a kind of skin cancer. [02:30.28]It has fallen by 7 percent a year recently. [02:36.08]The decrease is largely because of new drugs that became available about nine years ago. [02:45.24]There are differences in cancer rates among racial and ethnic groups in the United States. [02:53.28]African Americans have for many years had higher rates of cancer than white Americans. [03:01.52]However, that gap is shrinking. Hispanic Americans have generally had the lowest cancer rates. [03:11.88]I'm Jill Robbins. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM