Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity: The Million-Copy Bestseller

by Peter Attia

Our first and most obvious wish is to avoid getting cancer at all, like the centenarians—in other words, prevention. But cancer prevention is tricky, because we do not yet fully understand what drives the initiation and progression of the disease with the same resolution that we have for atherosclerosis. Further, plain bad luck seems to play a major role in this largely stochastic process. But we do have some clues, which is what we’ll talk about in the next two sections. Next is the use of newer and smarter treatments targeting cancer’s manifold weaknesses, including the insatiable metabolic hunger of fast-growing cancer cells and their vulnerability to new immune-based therapies, the outcome of decades of work by scientists like Steve Rosenberg. I feel that immunotherapy, in particular, has enormous promise. Third, and perhaps most importantly, we need to try to detect cancer as early as possible so that our treatments can be deployed more effectively.