In One Timeline

Childhood Leukemia: From a Death Sentence to 90% (1962-2024)

In the early 1960s a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia had about a 1-in-25 chance of living five years. Today it's about 9 in 10. The rise wasn't a single miracle drug - it was Total Therapy and a generation of cooperative clinical trials. The famous names (Gleevec, CAR-T) arrived AFTER the curve had already climbed.

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No third-party image credits. This episode's visuals are original charts/animations and AI-generated b-roll — nothing that requires attribution.

Data sources & references

01NCI SEER — childhood cancer survival statistics
02St. Jude Children's Research Hospital — historical survival data
03U.S. FDA — drug approvals (imatinib 2001; tisagenlecleucel 2017)
04Our World in Data — cancer survival (cross-check)