I know it can seem like every time you turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper, someone is offering a new clue on how we can prevent cancer.  Often, the answer is something you haven’t been able to pronounce since your high school biology class.  The science behind those reports is incredibly important and it will provide clues to eliminating cancer’s toll on humanity.  But the result is that we often ignore what we already know.

What exactly do we know?

We know how to prevent HALF (that’s not a typo) of all cancers.  Yes, really.

In a recent reports in Cancer Causes & Control and Science Translational Medicine, my colleagues and I outline the science behind this.  The 8 ways to prevent cancer campaign at Siteman Cancer Center focuses on the biggest contributors to that 50% of preventable cancers.  (You can watch me talk about it here.) While the ways we can prevent cancer mentioned in these articles might seem like “mere” health tips, they are real prescriptions for cancer prevention, based on more than 30 years of rigorous science from around the world.

Yes, tobacco and obesity really ARE that important for cancer prevention!