Cancer | featured news

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died of respiratory arrest brought on by a pancreatic tumor, a public health official said Monday.

Giving healthy men P.S.A. blood tests for prostate cancer does not save lives and often leads to treatment that can cause needless pain and side effects, the government panel said.

Wangari Maathai, the first African woman recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, died after a long struggle with cancer, the environmental organization she founded said Monday. She was 71....

In “Life Itself” the film critic Roger Ebert covers much career and personal ground, including the challenge of coping with cancer and disfiguring surgery.

According to a 2000 survey, Americans' worst fear is a cancer diagnosis. One out of every three women and one out of every two men will be diagnosed with cancer in her or his lifetime. It's against this backdrop that the American Association for Cancer Research, which bills itself as the world's largest cancer research organization, posed the question: Where do we stand in the war against cancer?

Kara Kennedy, the oldest child of the late senator Edward Kennedy, has died. Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman from Rhode Island, said his sister died Friday. "She's with dad," Patrick Kennedy said. Their father died in 2009 at age 77 after battling a brain tumor.

Whether the most technologically advanced way to check for colon cancer will become the standard screening method of the future does not appear to be a slam-dunk. The method, known as virtual colonoscopy, combines X-ray and computer technology to create three-dimensional views of the full length of the colon, the large intestine. It allows doctors to look for polyps, or pre-cancerous growths, or other signs of cancer or other intestinal disease. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, virtual colonoscopy can be done with computed tomography (called a CT or CAT scan) or with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

What's killing us? For decades, global health leaders have focused on diseases that can spread - AIDS, tuberculosis, new flu bugs. They pushed for vaccines, better treatments and other ways to control germs that were only a plane ride away from seeding outbreaks anywhere in the world....

Andy Whitfield, the 39-year-old star of the cable series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand," has died. "On a beautiful sunny Sydney spring morning, surrounded by his family, in the arms of his loving wife, our beautiful young warrior Andy Whitfield lost his 18 month battle with lymphoma cancer," Whitfield's wife Vashti said in a statement. "He passed peacefully surrounded by love. Thank you to all his fans whose love and support have help carry him to this point. He will be remembered as the inspiring, courageous and gentle man, father and husband he was."

A bacterium found in soil is showing promise as a way of delivering effective cancer drugs into tumours.