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Is Hollywood Trying To Make Cancer Sexy?

25 February 2013 9:46 AM, PST | Huffington Post | See recent Huffington Post news »

There are too few Hollywood endings when it comes to the depiction of cancer in movies, doctors say.

Last fall, Italian researchers analyzed 82 cancer-themed movies, including "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Gran Torino." They found that rarer cancers are most often featured and that characters were more likely to die than real-life patients.

"Very often the ill person doesn't get over the disease, and his death is somehow useful to the plot's outcome," Dr. Luciano De Fiore said in a statement. "This pattern is so strongly standardized that it persists in spite of real progress of treatments."

Cancer is the second most common cause of the death in the U.S., second only to heart disease. Yet as diagnosis has improved and treatments have advanced, there are an estimated 13.7 million survivors, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In the movies analyzed, 40 characters with cancer were women, and 35 were men, »

- Orange County Register

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