Cancer 'moonshot' needs more attention to prevention

In August, Vice President Joseph Biden announced new measures to help cancer patients access the clinical trials process as part of the "Cancer Moonshot" initiative to cure cancer unveiled by President Barack Obama in January. A blue-ribbon panel for the initiative has also issued recommendations for ending the disease, most of which focus on research into diagnosis and treatment.

In response to the announcement, PI’s Larry Cohen penned an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle advocating for prevention to be a bigger part of the Administration’s approach. Larry writes:

We know that much of cancer is located in community conditions and preventable factors. A 2015 article in Nature found that environmental factors in our communities contribute to 70 percent to 90 percent of cancers. A renewed commitment to research must focus not only on treatment, but on understanding how cancer is shaped and formed, including the interplay between genetic risk and the environment and well-being.

While encouraged by the panel’s mention of tobacco use prevention in its recommendations for ending the disease, Larry argues that cancer prevention shouldn't stop at tobacco. The same tobacco prevention strategies that have kept over eight million people from dying prematurely since 1964 should be applied to other cancer-causing community conditions. Larry explains:

Research indicates that eating a healthy diet high in fruits and vegetables is protective against cancer, so let's increase consumption of healthier foods across the country. Let's focus especially on increasing access to fresh produce in "food deserts," where the main type of accessible food is convenience stores with unhealthy snacks. Drinking alcohol increases cancer risk, so let's reduce the density of alcohol outlets in under-resourced neighborhoods. Community-wide, preventive solutions like these are limited in scale, cost-effective and help prevent other diseases that are costly and painful to treat and live with, such as heart disease and diabetes.

Efforts to cure the disease, while critical, won't save as many lives as addressing the community conditions that may trigger cancer cells in the first place - such as air and water pollution, limited access to healthy food and toxic stress from racism, community violence and substandard housing. These environmental conditions, particularly prevalent in disenfranchised communities, result in higher rates of cancer, as well as other chronic health conditions.

The op-ed concludes by emphasizing the need to prevent cancer and the suffering it brings. “Everyone has known and loved someone affected by cancer, and there’s a clear sense of urgency for action. In many cases, preventive action can be undertaken on a much faster timeline than research,” Larry concludes.