(1) In Vilhjalmur Stefansson's book _Cancer Disease of Civilization_ 1960; Hill and Wang, New York, NY. it points out that Stanislaw Tanchou "....gave the first formula for predicting cancer risk. It was based on grain consumption and was found to accurately calculate cancer rates in major European cities. The more grain consumed, the greater the rate of cancer." Tanchou's paper was delivered to the Paris Medical Society in 1843. He also postulated that cancer would likewise never be found in hunter-gatherer populations. This began a search among the populations of hunter-gatherers known to missionary doctors and explorers. This search continued until WWII when the last wild humans were "civilized" in the Arctic and Australia. No cases of cancer were ever found within these populations, although after they adopted the diet of civilization, it became common. (2) More recently Bruce Aimes of U.C. Berkeley published a series of articles on cancer causation in the journal Science (#236,238,240) one of which (in#238,Dec 18,1987) is titled "Paleolithic Diet, Evolution and Carcinogens". (3) Then there is this study: Franceschi S, et.al; "Intake of macronutrients and risk of breast cancer" Lancet 1996;347(9012):1351-6. This study was done in the Italian population which having a low awareness of diet and cancer issues there is less scope for recall bias. They found the risk of breast cancer decreased with increasing total fat intake whereas the risk increased with increasing intake of available carbohydrates. (4) Then we have Lutz, W.J., "The Colonisation of Europe and Our Western Diseases", Medical Hypotheses, Vol. 45, pages 115-120, 1995. Dr. Lutz, in the face of epidemiological studies that failed to support the current belief that fat intake was at the root of coronary disease and cancer, has done his own explorations of epidemiological data. His findings show a clear, inverse relationship between these civilisatory diseases and the length of time the people of a given region of Europe have had to adapt to the high carbohydrate diet associated with the cultivation of cereal grains that was begun in the Near East, and spread very slowly through Europe. (5) Apparently cancer LOVES carbohydrates. Conversely, a low-carb/hi-fat diet seems to slow tumor growth. Experiments using Low-Carb to Treat Cancer: http://dp.cs.uiuc.edu/~jyelon/lowcarb.med/topic8.html (6) And finally: Key et al., BMJ 313:775 (1996) found that the breast cancer mortality ratio of vegetarians was significantly greater (1.65) than that for health-conscious nonvegetarians. While this higher mortality might be attributable to a higher proportion of vegetarian women that have never had children, there certainly is no evidence that vegetarianism helped at all. The overall mortality ratio was slightly higher for vegetarians (1.07) than for nonvegetarians in this group of uniformly health-conscious people, but not significantly so. The mortality ratio for the group as a whole was half that of the general population, showing the beneficial effects of their lifestyle. The only dietary practice found to result in a significant reduction in mortality from specific diseases was eating fresh fruit daily. In case you were going to invoke the genetic fallacy as a rebuttal, two of the authors note that they are members of the Vegetarian Society UK. Don.