Cancer has emerged as a major killer in several newly industrialized countries and is striking more people in areas of developing world where it was hardly known before, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. Although the risk of cancer will stabilize, if not decline, in industrialized countries by 2025, developing countries will suffer increasing rates of the disease, the WHO said in an extensive report on the world’s state of health. Cancer caused 12 percent of the 52 million deaths worldwide in 1997 and was the third leading killer after infectious and parasitic diseases and coronary and heart disease.