The Merits of the Basics
From the Australian, a reminder of the basics: firstly, good general health practices; secondly, a sober appreciation of the realities of scientific progress - don't blind yourself by chasing illusionary immediate and easy answers when you could be helping to bring the real future of better, more effective medicine closer. "It's the unproven remedy or the individual 'wonder food' that dominates cancer headlines, rather than genuinely exciting treatment breakthroughs in evidence-based medicine - which must first be rigorously tested before being trumpeted to a public that faces a 30 per cent increase in cancer incidence over the next five to 10 years. Even less prominent in the news is the evidence that more than a third of Australia's cancer deaths can be attributed to lifestyle. So, while an ageing Australia looks to the horizon for a cancer cure, we need to be reminded that technology for significantly reducing our cancer burden is already here - we're just not using it effectively. It would appear that our understanding of the lifetime risk of getting cancer is far stronger than our knowledge of what we can do to prevent it."
Link: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21159559-23289,00.html