What is the number 1 strategy for fighting cancer?

Lance Armstrong suggests taking steps, mobilising lawmakers against tobacco companies - smoking is the number 1 root cause of cancer.

I'm going to suggest a more basic approach. If you have a girlfriend, mother, daughter, boss, colleague, friend - whatever, that smokes - urge them to stop. You can push the point home by laying down the law. If they smoke, you leave the room (or won't be coming). It's that serious, and you can tell them that.

I'd like to encourage you to do this from my own personal testimony. Probably the greatest thing we've achieved in our relationship of 3 years, is that my girlfriend stopped smoking. In the context of a mother and brother, and a sister in law who smoke, that's some achievement. She said she didn't do it for me, but for herself. She also says she still has occassional cravings, but they always pass. Since she is only 26 years old, a future that could have been filled with hospital visits and poor health is suddenly wiped out. It's a great feeling.

So do your best for those close to you. And for those who don't smoke make a personal commitment to healthier living. An example of the commitment we're talking about is that whether you're in your 30's, 40's or 50's you've still got to be getting exercise a few times a week. It's not something that ever stops. It's a lifestyle. Keeping up an active lifestyle will enable you to live not only a longer life, but you'll also maintain a happier, and better quality of everyday existence. You know this, so do it!

clipped from online.wsj.com Cancer affects every person in this country. Twelve million Americans have the disease; this year alone nearly 600,000 lives will be lost to it, while 1.4 million of us will get the dreaded diagnosis from our doctors. In some communities, death rates are substantially higher than in others. "Of all the forms of inequality," Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." Cancer deaths are shamefully high among minorities and the poor because many lack access to life-saving prevention and treatment measures. What can you do? Ask your local, state and national lawmakers what steps they'll take against tobacco, the number one cause of cancer, and how they'll ensure that all of us – not just star athletes and politicians – have access to prevention efforts, early screening and effective treatment. Educate yourself and others. Support cancer programs in your community. Live a healthy life. And vote.