Interested in the links between behavior and cancer? Here's your chance to participate in a controlled study known as the Cancer Prevention Study-3 or CPS-3. The University of California, Davis and the American Cancer Society wants people in the Sacramento and Davis area who have not had cancer and are between the ages of 30 and 65 to volunteer to participate in a controlled research study aimed at preventing cancer by studying behavior.
Research subjects will have to agree to get their blood drawn and stored, have their waistlines measured and fill out a detailed baseline survey for the American Cancer Society's Department of Epidemiology and Surveillance Research. It doesn't involve you taking any medicines. Check out the website, "Join Our Cancer Prevention Study - 3 - American Cancer Society."
Grass-roots effort to learn more about what causes cancer
What organizers want are large numbers of local volunteers to participate in a nationwide grass-roots effort to learn more about the causes of cancer. The study's 300,000 or more participants will be in it for the long haul – 20 to 30 years of surveys to fill out every few years, recording their lifestyle habits, environmental factors and genetics.
This is the third large-scale cancer-prevention study the American Cancer Society has launched in more than six decades. The study's goal is to produce useful information for researchers trying to crack the code of cancer prevention. Also check out the February 25, 2013 Sacramento news article by Cynthia H. Craft, "Sacramento volunteers sought for long-term cancer-prevention study."
The studies look at relationships and links between behavior and cancer
The first controlled study called the CPS-1, was conducted in the 1950s. It is credited for making the link between smoking and lung cancer, resulting in the original surgeon general's warning against tobacco use. The second controlled study, known as the CPS-2, discovered the cause-and-effect relationship between obesity and cancer.
The person behind the study is Moon Chen, a professor and associate director of Population Research and Cancer Disparities at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, according to the Sacramento Bee article. If you look at the history of the three CPS studies, each of them tracked hundreds of thousands of people.
These types of studies offer research details that cannot be uncovered in clinical trials. Now you're looking at CPS-3 which looks at behavior and cancer prevention. It's very important to have this opportunity to study people living in specific areas and looking at their behavior.
The new study will track living conditions in human populations not laboratory situations with artificial controls
The study will track real-world living condition many people from diverse backgrounds in America. What the recruits are looking for is a diverse population of people age 30 to 65 who have never had a cancer diagnosis. If this interests you, sign up for CPS-3 at the CPS3 website. The website lists a number of locations where people can enroll April 10-20.
You may want to check out an article about cancer from 2008 that is not specifically related to the UC Davis studies or the American Cancer Society studies. The article is "Cancer is not a Disease - It's a Survival Mechanism" (book excerpt), by Andreas Moritz at the Natural News site.
That article, which is not related to the present study or to UC Davis, notes that it pertains to a book excerpt claiming that "cancer - the body's final healing mechanism - will only kick in after the body's main waste removal and detoxification mechanisms have already been rendered inefficient." Whatever your view or research interest, on another note, the new study will be looking at behavior and lifestyle.
Why the age range?
The reason for the age range, officials said, is that people younger than 30 may not have had enough life experiences to report, and those older than 65 may not remember details well enough to establish a baseline survey. If you participate, you can hold the thought that you may be able to prevent someone having cancer by taking part in this study.
Research statistics show that cancer in general peaked in 1991 in the United States, and there has been a 20 percent drop in mortality rates in the past two decades. How you can help if you participate in the new study is that there's still a prediction out from the American Cancer Society, which is a projection that 1.6 million new cancer diagnoses will be made in 2013, and that 580,000 Americans will die from cancer.
That's still far below how many people will die of hardening of the arteries and heart disease. For more information about the study whose goal is to push those number further down, check out the massive prevention trial. It's also known by the name, "the Cancer Prevention Study-3," or CPS-3. For further information, check out the websites, Cancer Prevention Study-3 or CPS-3. Or see the site, "Join Our Cancer Prevention Study - 3 - American Cancer Society."
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