None. The Medical Research Council (MRC), one of the main agencies through which the Government supports medical and clinical research, is currently funding a broad portfolio of cancer research, including early stage trials and basic and underpinning research. The MRC has not received or considered any proposals to assess the effectiveness of dichloroacetate in attacking cancer cells. The Council always welcomes high quality applications for support in any aspect of biomedical research and these are judged in open competition with other demands on funding.
I have been asked to reply.
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Karen Dunnell, dated 16 April 2007:
As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking how many people diagnosed with cancer there were in (a) England and Wales and (b) Gloucestershire, broken down by type of cancer in each of the last five years for which figures are available. [131171]
The latest available figures for newly diagnosed cases (incidence) of cancer in England are for the years 2004. Figures for 2000-2004 for (a) England and Wales and (b) the county of Gloucestershire are given in Table 1 below. Table 1 provides data for ‘all cancers excluding non-melanoma skin cancer’ and the four most common cancers—breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate—which accounted for more than half of new cases of malignant cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) registered in England and Wales in 2004.
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Males England and Wales All cancers xnmsc 122,046 124,103 123,225 123,917 126,539 Prostate 24,737 27,796 28,591 28,812 31,676 Lung 20,312 19,820 19,220 18,786 19,403 Colorectal 16,670 16,191 16,273 16,634 17,231 Gloucestershire All cancers xnmsc 1,842 2,005 1,783 1,856 2,201 Prostate 309 354 301 324 373 Lung 176 189 146 151 147 Colorectal 189 191 161 198 212 Females England and Wales All cancers xnmsc 122,127 122,877 121,542 125,134 123,883 Breast 35,978 36,493 36,670 38,901 39,308 Colorectal 14,248 13,955 13,926 13,894 14,361 Lung 12,882 12,768 12,687 13,042 13,269 Gloucestershire All cancers xnmsc 1,921 1,865 1,778 1,907 2,429 Breast 435 467 443 526 471 Colorectal 176 154 154 154 163 Lung 127 110 106 134 93 1 Cancers are coded to the International Classification of Diseases (Tenth Revision): Colorectal C18-21, Lung C33-34, Breast C50, Prostate C61, All cancers excluding non-melanoma skin cancer C00-97 xC44. Source: Office for National Statistics