A dispute about priorities for cancer prevention simmered in the medical press, with top occupational and environmental cancer experts hitting back at those who said the focus should be limited to improving ‘lifestyle’. The debate resurfaced in The Lancet Oncology in June 2012, with US and UK academics challenging the view “that people will be diverted from addressing their risky lifestyles by too much public concern about environmental and occupational exposures,” adding: “This view implies that people cannot hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time and we cannot as a society try to prevent cancer with several causes.”

Jamie Page, Paul Whaley, Andrew Watterson and Richard Clapp. Priorities for cancer prevention, The Lancet Oncology, volume 13, issue 6, Page e230, June 2012. Risks 559.