Cancer in North America,¹ a report released in April 1998, provided an overview of mortality, for the years between 1990 and 1994, from this cause in both Canada and the United States. During this time period, a total of 2,604,650 Americans and 274,742 Canadians died from cancer, at an average rate of 520,930 a year in the United States and 54,950 annually in Canada. To dramatize these losses further, they were characterized by the press as being equivalent to one Titanic sinking each day, or 12 survivorless jumbo jet crashes each week.² These figures give further support to Simone and colleagues³ percent prediction that, by the year 2000, "cancer will emerge as the number one cause of death in the United States".