Prevention better than cure in fighting cancer killer.

SINGAPORE (JP): The 41-year-old Robby was devastated when he was diagnosed as suffering from advanced lung cancer.

He could not stand to think about the little time he had left with his wife and two teenage children. For him and millions of other patients, lung cancer sounds like a death sentence.

Despite advances in oncological treatment, a diagnosis of cancer invariably fills a patient with dread.

Often the diagnosis is too late for doctors to treat patients with the most advanced medicine and technology.

Speaking at the Gleaneagles Hospital's annual seminar Cancer 2000 in Singapore early this month, University of California oncology professor Judith Luce said cancer was a disease of global epidemic proportions but it was preventable.

In the last 10 years, degenerative diseases including cancer have increased as the main cause of death instead of …