Henderson B E, Ross R K, Pike M C
Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles 90033.
Science. 1991 Nov 22;254(5035):1131-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1957166.
This is the threshold of an era when many of the most prevalent human cancers can, to a significant extent, be prevented through life-style changes or medical interventions. For lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, the major cause, cigarette smoking, is known and strategies for reducing smoking are slowly succeeding. Dietary changes can reduce the risk of developing large bowel cancer, the second most common cancer overall. The etiology of the major cancer in women, cancer of the breast, is sufficiently well understood that large-scale medical intervention trials are imminent. Recent changes in the incidence and mortality of these and the other major human cancers are reviewed with a brief explanation as to why these changes have occurred, followed by a summary of the state of knowledge regarding the major causes of cancer.
这是一个时代的开端，在这个时代，许多最常见的人类癌症在很大程度上可以通过生活方式的改变或医学干预来预防。在美国，肺癌是癌症死亡的主要原因，其主要病因——吸烟是已知的，并且减少吸烟的策略正在慢慢取得成效。饮食的改变可以降低患结肠癌的风险，结肠癌是总体上第二常见的癌症。女性主要癌症——乳腺癌的病因已得到充分了解，大规模医学干预试验即将开展。本文回顾了这些主要人类癌症以及其他癌症近期发病率和死亡率的变化，并简要解释了这些变化发生的原因，随后总结了关于癌症主要病因的知识现状。
