Agreed it's fucking evil. I've lost half a dozen family members to it in the last 15 years, all between 40 and 65. I fucking hate it with a passion.
Maybe it's just me but I'm often saying to the wife how when I was a little kid, it seemed like it was a lot less prevalent. You'd hear of it but not often. Nowadays almost every family seems to be touched by the fucking thing.
I think that may well be because previous generations tended to keep illnesses quieter. I think they where most probably more used to earlier mortality, whether through warfare or living/working conditions. There where also a lot more fatal illnesses knocking around in the community I think which didn't have the stigma of being "self-inflicted". Lot's of people died because of TB (including my newly discovered birth Grandma, found out a couple of years ago I was adopted in L17) Treatment of diabetes and asthmas and other chronic conditions was less advanced that it is now, as well as all the other occupational illnesses that people "just got on with"
But as the OP said, cancer's still a bastard. The bloke who had influenced me most in my working life died about 10 years ago, in his early 40's, and I've lost ex-colleagues before they even hit 40 to it. Some of those I've discovered left through Facebook. Maybe a factor in our knowing about it, is that though our communities are less local, they are wider in some sense.
I had to go to Clatterbridge for a bone density scan the other day, and I was just weirded out being there. I think it'll always have that stigma about it.