A
tThe Scientist, we report stories that deal
mostly with the nuts and bolts of biology.
Whether we’re writing about cutting-edge
cancer research or the latest ecological insights, we
tend to focus on new conceptual or technical ground
that scientists are breaking in the lab and field, and
how this knowledge changes, confirms, or enhances
our understanding of living things.
But when one considers the practical ripples that
biology sends through societies—issues of public health
and the shared goal of minimizing the impact of dis-
eases on a global scale—human behavior and preven-
tion become vitally important. As I write this piece, pre-
vention of this type is on the lips of just about everyone,
with infections of the newly discovered SARS-CoV-
virus sweeping around the world, causing illness
and death and prompting closures and cancellations
aplenty. Public health officials are rightly championing
preventive measures, such as frequent and thorough
hand washing and limiting social interaction, as keys
to slowing the spread of the novel pathogen.
Prevention has been playing a growing role in other
diseases, infectious and otherwise, long before this lat-
est global pandemic. Cancer, the focus of this issue, is
ubiquitous, and one would be hard pressed to find a
person anywhere on Earth whose life wasn’t in some
way touched by the complex and vexing malady. But
its distribution is far from uniform. Cancer exists in
patches. To be sure, some of these patches, or “clusters”
as epidemiologists often refer to them, result from envi-
ronmental carcinogens affecting populations that are,
by dint of geography, occupation, or some other demo-
graphic feature, particularly exposed to them. Other
clusters, though, owe more to lifestyle factors such as
diet, smoking, and the uneven application of preven-
tive measures, such as frequent medical screening and,
more broadly, access to quality healthcare.
In 2017, the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention reported a disturbing trend across the US
that strikes at the heart of prevention’s power. “While
rural areas have lower incidence of cancer than urban
areas, they have higher cancer death rates,” the agency
found. “The differences in death rates between rural
and urban areas are increasing over time.” Residents
of rural areas tend to be poorer, with less access to
medical services than their city-dwelling counterparts.This disparity leads not only to a higher death rate in
rural places from all cancer types, but also to a higher
incidence of some cancer types, such as colorectal and
cervical cancers, that can be more effectively treated
or avoided altogether with measures for prevention
and early detection, such as regular screening. As the
oft-quoted Benjamin Franklin once said, “A n ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
This cancer-focused issue features a cover story in
which we explore one facet of cancer prevention: exer-
cise. On page 38, Danish researcher Bente Klarlund
Pedersen explains that studies have shown frequent
exercise to be useful in avoiding cancer as well as in
helping cancer patients lessen the side effects of their
cancers and treatments. Her research and that of oth-
ers is seeking to enumerate the molecular and cellular
mechanisms that underlie the benefits exercise seems
to offer cancer patients.
I sincerely hope that by the time you are read-
ing this, the thoughtful preventive measures that are
being taken now at the recommendation of scientists
and public health officials have served to dampen the
effect of SARS-CoV-2 and turn the tide of infection
and death seen around the world. Only time will tell,
but it’s comforting in times like these that research-
ers are studying the biology of prevention and seeking
to apply rigorous science to help people and societ-
ies change their behavior, to the benefit of human-
ity’s health.Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]FROM THE EDITORANDRZEJ KRAUZE
04.2020 | THE SCIENTIST 9Avoiding illness can be as valuable as fighting it.BY BOB GRANTPounds of Prevention