TURNING OFF CANCER 67ciples involved in one thousand human cancers every year, one million
human cancers every year, or more? We need direct evidence from hu-
man research. Ideally, this evidence would be gathered with rigorous
methodology and would investigate dietary patterns comprehensively,
using large numbers of people who had similar lifestyles, similar genetic
backgrounds, and yet had widely varying incidences of disease.
Having the opportunity to do such a study is rare, at best, but by
incredibly good luck we were given exactly the opportunity we needed.
In 1980 I had the good fortune of welcoming in my laboratory a most
personable and professional scientist from mainland China, Dr. Junshi
Chen. With this remarkable man, opportunities arose to search for some
larger truths. We were given the chance to do a human study that would
take all of these principles we had begun to uncover in the lab to the
next level. It was time to study the role of nutrition, lifestyle and disease
in the most comprehensive manner ever undertaken in the history of
medicine. We were on to the China Study.