Finding our roots: early population-based cancer registration, 1925

In 1925, the American Public Health Association Committee on Control of Cancer presented the results of its 1924-1925 operations at the association's annual meeting. The Committee evaluated the issue of cancer surveillance, both active and passive, and concluded that the probity of the cancer incidence data, however useful it might be, was outweighed by the likely cost. The reasoning provided by the Committee suggests a sophisticated understanding of many aspects of cancer epidemiology often thought to be a post-World War II development. From the Committee's report, we see that modern cancer epidemiology appears to have started at least as early as the 1920s, and perhaps even earlier.