Elsevier

Public Health

Volume 125, Issue 12, December 2011, Pages 813-820
Public Health

Guest Editorial
Can law improve prevention and treatment of cancer?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2011.10.002Get rights and content

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A focus on cancer prevention and treatment

Taking cancer as its focus, this symposium explores the possibilities for using law and regulation – both internationally and at the national level – as the policy instrument for preventing and improving the treatment of NCDs. There is an urgent need for more legal scholarship, and action, on cancer and other leading NCDs, together with greater dialogue between lawyers, public health practitioners and policy-makers about priorities for law reform, and feasible legal strategies for reducing the

The World Cancer Declaration and UICC’s leadership

This symposium issue of Public Health is one of the outcomes of an international conference convened jointly by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and the Sydney Law School on 10–11 June 2010. UICC also hosted a session on legal approaches to cancer prevention and treatment at the World Cancer Congress held in Shenzhen, China, in August 2010. Both conferences were part of a process, which this symposium continues, of exploring how law could serve as a resource for governments and

Unhealthy choices and unhealthy environments

Of the many challenges that regulatory responses to risk factors for cancer and NCDs raise, two stand out. The first is the importance of unseating the popular view that, since risk factors like smoking, drinking to excess, eating a poor diet and living a sedentary lifestyle involve personal lifestyle choices, prevention is largely a matter of personal responsibility. The role of government, on this view, is limited to providing information and promoting a healthier lifestyle through mass media

Terms of engagement: tobacco, alcohol and food

It is precisely because the priority interventions in Table 1 target the external environment, rather than individuals themselves, that they create the potential for conflict with the tobacco, alcohol, food, and retail industries. Again, the contemporary history of automobile safety is illuminating. Moves by Ralph Nader and other activists in the 1960s and 1970s to turn the spotlight from drivers to environmental determinants33 created instant conflict with the automobile industry. While

Legal approaches to cancer prevention and treatment

There is no single blueprint for the legal interventions that could most effectively reduce cancer risks across the population. Although we believe that legal strategies have a role to play in reducing tobacco, alcohol and diet-related risks, there will be much to learn from sharing experiences between jurisdictions in the years ahead, and much to debate in the meantime.

Legislation is not a new phenomenon for cancer prevention. In the United States, for example, President Nixon’s “war on

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