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In his foreword to the first (1982) edition ofCancer Epidemiology and Prevention, Lilienfeld noted, "Less than forty years ago, cancer was regarded as... a natural concomitant of the aging process. As a result of the gradual accumulation of evidence, climaxed by the epidemiologic studies that implicated cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer, a major conceptual change regarding the nature of cancer occurred.... This paradigmatic shift has yielded the basis for seriously considering methods of cancer prevention and control." The second edition of this monumental work details the current status of epidemiologic knowledge and how the accumulating evidence sustains and enhances that paradigmatic shift. The field is advancing so rapidly that even during the period of this edition's preparation, the early 1990s, age-adjusted cancer mortality in the United States finally turned downward after rising for decades. After introducing basic concepts of cancer epidemiology and providing information on its
Lester Breslow (Wed,) studied this question.