Cancer prevention is frequently confused with early detection. Early detection is helpful because treatments are more effective but total prevention is ideal. Prevention saves pain, anguish and money. Prevention should be everyone’s goal.

A great deal is known about the cancer process and the variety of things that can affect it. There are three major steps in development. They often occur over long periods of time, even decades, but can occur simultaneously in one part of the body. The steps are MUTATION, CANCER PROMOTION and CANCER PROGRESSION.

The chances of any of these steps taking place in our bodies can be significantly reduced by understanding and knowledge. Research has gone a long way to showing us how each of the three stages can be eliminated or minimized. This is still work in progress but there is already a great deal that you can do right NOW. Intelligent people are capable of understanding these processes and adopting a prevention strategy. The details are outlined in my e-book “Know your enemy: strengthen yourself against cancer”.

We know that the rates of most cancers are rising, especially breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. It is clear that these cancers result from modern Western-style diets and lifestyles. The death rates in these cancers have dropped but the suffering has not. Most research funding has been directed towards treatments rather than prevention. Perhaps there is a new wonder drug on the market or a new discovery about how to administer radiation. This research is of course very helpful once we are ill – and maybe it had to be undertaken first - but why isn’t there more emphasis put on prevention strategies? Do we need to get ill in the first place?

There are several fairly obvious reasons why most money, effort and publicity is put into cure rather than prevention. It is really very easy to understand but this bias is hard to justify.

• First, many of us live in a capitalist economies. Businesses have to make money and so they need to sell products. Drug companies invest heavily in each drug that they develop and many never reach the market so pharmaceutical companies need to market their products very strongly in order to recoup money for their shareholders.

• Second, prevention doesn’t sell newspapers and is hard to prove. The absence of something is never as interesting or startling as drama. Prevention doesn’t captivate the audience in the same way as dramatic cures. Being saved from a trauma is much more interesting than the absence of trauma in the first place. Drama sells newspapers, books, radio, TV and films.

• Third, there are vested interests in many of the products that are causing cancer. In 1939 there was definite proof that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer. Serious efforts to curtail smoking have only occurred in some countries recently. In others, it hasn’t started. We have a long way to go before we restrict other cancer causing agents.

• Fourth, politicians don’t win votes on prevention. Prevention is slow. The results are only seen over the long term. Politicians are generally disinterested in things that can’t be accomplished within their term of office.

Cancer is a word that strikes fear in the heart of individuals and families. When it strikes close to us we sit impotently by as we watch our loved one suffer. The victim is usually offered surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy and goes through a dreadful time of illness and suffering, not knowing whether they are winning the battle. Cancers vary. Some are more aggressive than others. Some have a reasonable chance of survival. Other cancers are outright killers. A cancer death is always ugly, usually painful and often degrading.

Dr Judy Ford is an internationally respected geneticist who has undertaken considerable research into the causes and prevention of cancer . Her research has shown that the risks of most cancers can be greatly reduced by changes to healthy lifestyles and healthy habits. More information can be found on her websites http://www.the-lifestyle-doctor.com and http://www.egs.com.au .