Editor's notebook

TOPIC OF CANCER - Given recent trends in the economy, right now we can use all the good news we can get. And we got some good news this week, in time for Thanksgiving, courtesy of a report by the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and other scientific organizations.

For one thing, death rates from cancer are declining, going down an average of 1.8 percent a year from 2002 to 2005. That's good, but not a surprise, as the same trend has been observed for about 15 years.

More striking is that cancer diagnosis rates also went down by an average of 0.8 percent a year from 1999 to 2005. This...