What are the most important aspects of dealing with an epidemic such as cancer? Should we be putting in place effective prevention programmes, developing innovative detection methods and making treatments more widely available?
Do we need to improve awareness, promote healthy lifestyles and diets, fight behavioural pathogens, encourage a positive attitude to life and allow for appropriate, accurate information on the food that we eat?
I do not believe there is one simple answer to this. We live in an increasingly rapid and polluted world that poses numerous threats to our health.
These range from specific risks such as endocrine disruptors to general public ignorance and a denial of the impacts of our own day-to-day actions.
At the same time, various powerful interests, often the very same people, who are in danger, protect the causes of these threats.
When it comes to health legislation, the European Parliament's competences are a somewhat limited. Nevertheless, working within the scope of what we can do, Parliament should use its competences to push hard for health protection in all of the areas set out above.
With an ever-growing list of global crises, it is becoming harder than ever to get decision makers to focus on health agendas, however urgent they may be. It is important that we do wait until it is too late.
I encourage everyone reading this article to act positively to raise awareness as this year's world cancer day comes around.