For yourself, the best things you can do today is massively reduce your sugar (and high-fructose corn syrup, which is nearly identical) intake[1] and increase excercise[2]. Reducing sugar will cause you to increase other macro and micro nutrients that are healthier (which may help) and most likely cause you to loose weight if you need to (which will help).
Unfortunately, until public policy on diet (which is set by the people responsible for selling more corn and sugar) changes, it's not going to get better.
Why don't you link to peer-reviewed studies that definitively prove that corn and sugar cause cancer. It's quite disturbing and outrageous that you're using Iain's cancer to scare the public for political gain.
I have nothing to gain, so I think it odd that you would accuse me of doing this for political gain. I'm curious what political gain you think I could gain. I'm much more concerned about my kids growing up in a world where they can't escape sugar and HFCS being added to everything (including meat!) and the impact it will have on them and their kids.
Right now, there is no peer reviewed literature that definitively proves the sugar/cancer link. At best, there might be correlation.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get any funding for anything that might imply sugar is bad. The US, under pressure from the sugar lobby, threatened to pull $400M in WHO funding if they published a report saying "Too much sugar has bad side effect, you should limit consumption to 10% of your calories"[1][2][3]. The report was never published. This is made worse by 30 years of dogma, the fact that the FDA won't regulate substances that cause chronic diseases, and the conflict of interest the USDA has with coming up with what we "should" eat when their charter is to sell more crops.
I'm also not saying that if you don't eat sugar, you won't get cancer. Statistics apply to populations, not individuals. All I'm saying is there is probably a link between sugar and cancer, and, given sugar provides no positive nutritional value, cutting it out is probably a smart thing to do.
My heart goes out to Mr. Banks and his family and friends, just as much as my heart goes out to every cancer victim. As a society, we can do better.
It would be impossible to conduct such a study, as a causative study of this nature would be unethical under every established modern regime for scientific and medical ethics. Even a correlative study would be considered scientifically and medically unethical if a significant deviation is shown from the control group at any point during the study.
Unfortunately, until public policy on diet (which is set by the people responsible for selling more corn and sugar) changes, it's not going to get better.
1. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130201100149.ht...
2. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/prevention/phys...