David - cancer is a disease that changes things on a genetic level. It is a disease of genetic aberrations. Those can be naturally inherited, caused by an outside toxin like those in tobacco, the air we breathe, what we ingest, industrial chemicals (etc. ad nasueum), caused by radiation, caused by living organisms like viruses. Everyone one of those things begins by altering/damaging the genetic make up of a cell, starting a cascade of further events. You cannot simplify this they way that you want to. Cancer is over 500 individual diseases. Everybody has to accept that it is in your genes as much as it is in your lifestyle choices. That genetic predisposition is something you can't do anything about. That argument should end things for people, because if you can't get there in your mind, you will never come to terms with "WHY ME" which in many cases there are no absolutes for.

Even if you do identify tobacco (as an example) as the cause of your cancer, you have to match that carcinogenic cause with your individual genome and proteome, which make up your uniquely individual predisposition (or protection) to allow the development of cancer to take place. If you can't get you mind around that it is the combination of these two things, one of which you can't know about completely or control, I can see why you don't understand why tobacco is not a cause of cancer in everyone that smokes, HPV16 isn't a cause in everyone that gets it, not everyone that is infected with the human T-cell leukemia virus#1 gets blood cancer, and so on.

And people who smoked for a decade of their life some time in the past have not necessarily rid themselves of the damage done during that period of time just because another decade has past. Yes our bodies repair, and to some extent (individually) recover as times passes and the physical insult diminishes, but it is not like being a never-smoker. You may have caused damages that are now only peripherally associated with the development of a disease, but still make you less than 100%.

We do not fully know the extent to which HPV and many other causes take us to full malignancy when you compare that to what we know about the tobacco process. We have just had a much longer time, and spent more money, to look at tobacco and its mechanisms for being a cause.

I am going to quit talking about all this. It serves no purpose to most of the people that come to the boards, as it does not alter treatments or choices for them. It takes my time from the emails and other things from people that are in the fight. That does not mean that if I read something that is incorrect on these boards I will not challenge it or just delete it as bad information that should be perpetuated.

For those of you who wish to be activists in this battle, particularly as it relates to the new NPV threat, I commend you, but you need to bone up more than you are if you are really going to make solid arguments about things. I suggest that you start here, and get the basics.

We know that all cancers (neoplastic transformations) result from changes (mutations) in genes which control cell behaviors. Mutated genes may result in a cell which grows and proliferates at an uncontrolled rate, is unable to repair DNA damage within itself, or refuses to self destruct or die (apoptosis). It takes more than one mutation to turn a cell cancerous. Specific classes of genes must be mutated several times to result in a neoplastic cell, which then grows in an uncontrolled manner. When a cell does become mutated to this point, it is capable of passing on the mutations to all of its progeny when it divides. Genetic mistakes randomly happen each day in the course of our bodies replacing billions of cells. Besides these random occurrences, genetic errors can be inherited, be caused by viruses, or develop as a result of exposure to chemicals or radiation. Our bodies normally have mechanisms that destroy these abnormal cells. We are now discovering some of the reasons this fails to take place, and cancers occur.

More about the genetics of cancer, this requires study and can't be spoon fed.

http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/facts/cancer_genetics.htm

http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/facts/pdf/oncogenes_and_cancer.pdf