From here, curing cancer would increase life expectancy by 2.3 years. (Everyone dies of something.) But as seen above, in the past 50 years, life expectancy in the US has increased by ~6 years - far more than would have come about from entirely curing cancer.
Globally, life expectancy has increased by 13.8 years!
(And this is not just a decrease in child mortality, although WTF? How would that nullify how amazing this is?)
How did this better-than-curing-cancer happen? Science! Here is the Works In Progress latest month in biology. At least skim the various topics - crazy!
Note the advances in multiple myeloma, the disease that killed the great Kevin Drum.
(Yes, I do regularly emphasize that scientists are human. You can note that scientists are flawed humans and still recognize how great and important science itself is.)
Off topic: in honor of France in the World Cup, here is a translation I just heard about.
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