How Much Can You Prevent Serious Illness?

Serious illness can be an intrusion into what we assume is our birthright—eternal well-being. And that's when we may be reminded of the failure of that Spanish explorer and conquistador, Ponce de Leon. Remember him from your elementary school days? To refresh your memory, in case that's beginning to slip a little also, he's the guy who was obsessed with finding a fountain that was reported to flow with water that cured illness and granted the drinker eternal youth.

Unfortunately, perhaps because he was as enthusiastic about finding gold as he was in discovering how to prevent death, he managed to rile up the natives in the lands he conquered and faced rebellion both in Puerto Rico and in Florida, where he caught a poison arrow and later died in Cuba. Otherwise, today we might all be buying little bottles labeled "Florida Elixir of Youth." And the world would be even more overpopulated than it is today, since we'd all be eternally youthful and able to procreate more customers for the magic elixir. And whoever had the concession stand for the fountain would be the world's first zillionaire.

Well, de Leon may have failed, but others have taken over the attempt to ward off old age and death. Here on the Internet, for example, there are many charlatans who promise you instant cures, nostrums to keep you young, and techniques to prevent all sorts of serious illness.

We can't all forestall serious illness, but there are things we can do. Eventually we hope to have a variety of articles in this subsection. For now we focus on cancer.