> Data show that smoking, drinking alcohol and obesity are the biggest contributors to cancer worldwide.
> Nearly 50% of cancer deaths worldwide are caused by preventable risk factors, such as smoking and drinking alcohol, according to the largest study of the link between cancer burden and risk factors
Interested to see what your response is to the article once you finish reading it :-)
The human body can take enormous amounts of environmental abuse, but there’s clearly room for improvement.
Many lives will experience cancer, but not the majority. So it seems to be more complex that immune inadequacy (unless 60% of immune systems are working really well, which would be noteworthy). It seems like a reasonable hypothesis that environment is playing a larger role than individual genetic variations. So encouraging people (or even scaring them) to not smoke, not drink, eat better and exercise more seems like a reasonable approach - it won't cure cancer, but it could reduce rates?
1: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics