This fall I stood in front of a room of people with advanced colorectal cancer--people whose cancer had eaten through their large intestine and invaded other organs in their body. Sadly, more than half of them would never have had cancer at all, if they had received a simple screening test.

Two days after I stood in that room, the news broke that cancer rates are dropping. Researchers and scientists were boasting of improvement in cancer death rates -- down 2.5 percent!

Pardon me if I don't get too excited. The fact is, we know how to reduce the risk of some of the most prevalent cancers. And one of the easiest to prevent is also the second-leading cancer killer -- colorectal cancer.

Every year more people die of colorectal cancer than are killed in car crashes. In 2007 more than 150,000 Americans were diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer and more than 50,000 died. And doctors estimate that at least 80 percent of these cancers can be prevented or cured through early detection.

For almost everyone this means celebrating their 50th birthday by having a colonoscopy. If we only did this, we would save tens of thousands of lives every year. So why isn't this happening?

Survivors I spoke with said they had never been told they should be screened. Too many people simply cannot afford to be screened; they are uninsured or underinsured. This despite studies proving that for every dollar spent on screening for colorectal cancer we save $2-$3 in health-care costs. Some people are afraid of the procedure or don't want to take the time.

Underlying all these reasons is a more basic problem -- we simply don't talk enough about colorectal cancer. Other kinds of cancer are much more present in the media, despite being much less common.

Making radical reductions in the number of deaths caused by colorectal cancer does not require any new expensive research or the development of new drugs. What it does require is elevating the dialogue about this disease.

Fact: Colon cancer affects men and women almost equally. Fact: The majority of people with colon cancer have no family history of the disease. Fact: A simple test, given every few years, will almost make this disease go away.

Surely a society that can create markets for fancy ring tones and overpriced coffee can let people know about cancer screening. I cannot find it in myself to look into the eyes of people who are needlessly being consumed by colon cancer and tell them that a 2.5 percent reduction is good news.

Tim Turnham is CEO of the Colon Cancer Alliance (CCA), a nonprofit organization of colon and rectal cancer survivors, their families and others.