Half of all cancers could be prevented if people just adopted healthier behaviours, US scientists argued on March 28. Smoking is blamed for a third of all US cancer cases and being overweight leads to another 20 percent of the deadly burden that costs the United States some $226 billion per year in health care and lost productivity.
For instance, up to three quarters of US lung cancer cases could be avoided if people did not smoke, said the review article in the US journal Science Translational Medicine.
Science has shown that plenty of other cancers can also be prevented, either with vaccines to prevent human papillomavirus and hepatitis, which can cause cervical and liver cancers, or by protecting against sun exposure, which can cause skin cancer.
Society as a whole must recognise the need for these changes and take seriously an attempt to instill healthier habits, said the researchers. "It's time we made an investment in implementing what we know," said lead author Graham Colditz, an epidemiologist at the Siteman Cancer Centre, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.
Exercising, eating right and refraining from smoking are key ways to prevent up to half of the 577,000 deaths from cancer in the United States expected this year, a toll that is second only to heart disease, according to the study.
But a series of obstacles to change are well enshrined in a society that will see an estimated 1,638,910 new cancer cases diagnosed this year.