For how we live.
Falling cervical cancer rates after HPV vaccination are well known. A 2026 analysis of mortality data goes further: among women vaccinated at 12–13 with ~90% coverage, no deaths were recorded against about 23 expected.
An IARC worldwide incidence analysis puts the infection-attributable share at 12%, led by H pylori and HPV, with eastern Asia carrying the heaviest load and most of the toll preventable.
The large trials built to confirm vitamin E's promise came back null, and a meta-analysis tied 400 IU a day or more to a small rise in all-cause mortality.
No study shows that eating sugar worsens cancer, phones do not damage genes, and biopsies rarely spread it. A guide to what the National Cancer Institute actually concludes about the most persistent myths.
No. A controlled study found orgasm did not change testosterone, and in two large cohorts more frequent ejaculation tracked with slightly lower — not higher — prostate cancer risk.
HPV drove 71.7% of US oropharyngeal cancers in the most recent period studied, and incidence in men rose 2.7% a year through 2017. Vaccination cuts the oral infections behind them.
A small 1990s trial hinted selenium supplements cut cancer, launching a supplement boom. The much larger SELECT trial found no benefit — and signals of harm, including more type 2 diabetes.
Diets rich in colourful fruit and vegetables track with less cancer, so supplement makers bottled beta-carotene. Two large trials in smokers found the pills raised lung cancer and death — the opposite of the hope.
A pooled study of 1.44 million adults links activity to lower risk of 13 cancers — but not all, and not melanoma. A 2025 randomised trial now shows exercise after colon cancer improves survival.
VITAL, with 25,871 adults, and D-Health, with 21,315, both tested vitamin D against placebo. Neither cut cancer incidence or cancer death — and one saw a signal pointing the wrong way.
High-heat cooking makes compounds that damage DNA in the lab — heterocyclic amines, PAHs and acrylamide. The catch is that human diet studies have mostly failed to find a consistent cancer link.
About 1 in 100,000 men in wealthy countries develop it, and roughly half of cases carry HPV. Absent childhood circumcision, phimosis and smoking raise risk; early spread to the groin drives outcomes.
Inviting people to a single colonoscopy cut 10-year colorectal cancer risk from 1.20% to 0.98%. The reduction in cancer deaths did not reach significance — and only 42% of those invited turned up.
A cohort of 5.24 million UK adults linked higher BMI to 17 of 22 cancers — strongly for the uterus, weakly or not at all for others, and inversely for a couple. The pattern is specific, not uniform.
A large US analysis attributed 42 percent of cancer cases to modifiable risk factors. One factor dwarfs all the others, and it is not diet.
A 2025 US Surgeon General advisory put alcohol third among preventable causes of cancer. The global data show light drinking contributes too, not only heavy use.
In 555,904 matched adults, screening endoscopy cut gastric cancer mortality in the 50s and 60s. Past 80, or with heavy comorbidity, the association reversed.
An inactive enzyme carried by an estimated 540 million people lets a carcinogen build up when they drink. In heavy-drinking carriers, oesophageal cancer risk runs many times higher.
Nous-209 targets 209 mutations shared across a whole class of tumours, so it can be manufactured in advance. What the trial has not yet shown is that anyone got less cancer.
Two Nature papers apply duplex sequencing with fewer than five errors per billion bases to cheek swabs and sperm — finding 46 genes under selection in mouth lining and a fatherhood risk that rises with age.