The Globe and Mail this weekend reported on what may be a major breakthrough in stupidity cancer prevention:

But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

Those trying to brand contaminants as the key factor behind cancer in the West are "looking for a bogeyman that doesn't exist," argues Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and one of the world's top vitamin D experts. Instead, he says, the critical factor "is more likely a lack of vitamin D."

[...] A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.

There you go: quit smoking, take an aspirin every day and make sure either by supplements or by sunlight exposure make sure you get sufficient Vitamin D and you're likely to live longer and healthier. The beautiful thing is that the latter two items are pretty easy to do. What has the establishment been focusing on in the meantime? Statistically meaningless improvements to our life, such as banning home use of pesticides and reducing your exposure to second-hand smoke, all more about hairshirt-morality than health or science.

And on the subject of the establishment:

In light of emerging research on the benefits of vitamin D, the Canadian Cancer Society said Monday that Canadians could consider brief, unprotected exposure to the sun, increased dietary intake of the vitamin and the use of supplements.

Keep in mind that, if the Vitamin D science holds up, various cancer societies 30-SPF sunblock no-sun-is-too-much-sun recommendations puts them in the same place as doctors who developed and prescribed thalidomide in the late 50's/early 60's.