Why Is There No Cholesterol Test for Cancer?

Siddhartha Mukherjee says medicine has no simple screening biomarker for cancer the way blood pressure and cholesterol work for heart disease: hypertension and high cholesterol levels mark cardiovascular disease, and he has no high cholesterol for cancer.

He says cancer can arise from more than the traditional carcinogens he names, x-rays, benzene, and tobacco. Inflammatory states almost certainly cause cancer, and he says the picture is not a gun and a trigger, with inflammation as the gun and mutations as the trigger. He still cannot look at his own patient and say that person is in an inflammatory state that will cause cancer. He expects that biomarker to be found, and he says people at risk could then enter clinical trials aimed at prevention.