Every student entering a bio field who learns what cancer is and how it works <i>already knows</i> that this is a disease shaped by many factors. Fundamentally, the problem of fighting cancer is the problem of fighting a set of evolutionary mechanisms that are trying to kill you. The popular press always insists on boiling everything down to one easy-to-understand factor, that&#x27;s how we get those ridiculous and recurring exclamations about cancer that have to be thrown out next week.<p>There is no single thing you can do as an individual that gets you off the hook for cancer. You can try reducing your probabilities based on the results of studies, but in most respects that&#x27;s a way more complicated endeavor than what the media portrays it as. Even regular prophylactic screening is not as good a tool as it instinctively seems. Many studies don&#x27;t give you the complete picture at all, so it rarely makes sense to change your life based on the latest breathlessly exaggerated finding blared at you by the press.