Indeed, even though many Americans hope that some miraculous new drug will be discovered to cure cancer, many medical researchers have looked to more commonplace solutions. Since up to 80 percent of cancers are ded to environmental factors, they have suggested that many cancers may be preventable by altering environmental conditions, including one’s life style.

Perhaps one of the most striking relationships between people’s life style and disease is the strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Lung cancer is also linked with air pollution in cities with high concentrations of industry and vehicular traffic. And lung canccr is higher along the Gulf Coi^t of Louisiana and in the Southeast and the Northeast of the United States 一 all areas where chemical, paper, and petroleum industries are dominant. And asbestos workers run a much hidier risk for lung cancer than do people in the general population.

The prevalence of the various kinds of cancers difFers from one part of the world to another. When people migrate from their home culture to d foreign one 一 Japanese moving to the Unites States or European Jews to Israel 一 they display the cancer patterns of their adopted country within a few generations. For instance, the hi^i amount of animal fat in the diet of Western nations is closely linked with high rates of cancer of the breast, ucerus, and large bowel. The rate of uterine cancer in the United States is six times hi^ier than in Nigeria and Japan where average fat consumption is only 40 grams per day (compared With 150 grams per day in the United States).

People’s occupations also increase their risk of contracting certain types of cancer. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health find diat the rate of Leukemia is 78 percent higher among shoe-factory workers than in the population at large. Prostate cancer is 156 percent hi^ier among welders; esophagus cancer 97 pcrcent higher among plumbers; oral cavity and pharynx cancer 152 percent higher among workers in printing trades; and multiple myeloma 186 percent higher among carpenters. The environment is implicated in sdll other occupation -related diseases, including black •lung disease among coal miners and chronic bronchitis and en^)hysema amoi^; textile workers.

The AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) epidemic, which began in the United States in 1981，affords still another illustration. It was initially identified among homosexuals and later among drug addicts and hemophiliacs. The disease wipes out the body’s immune system and invites in its wake a rare type of cancer and various life - threatening infections. ADDS appears to have taken advantage of changes in technology and life style. It is spread by random sexual activity, the sharing of needles among drug addicts, and the use of blood banks by hemophiliacs‘ The disease has touched off intense fear and anxiety in homosexual communities and changed life patterns of countless homosexuals. Such fear has triggered one of the most intensive investigations of an epidemic in medical history.