Simone and colleagues recently predicted that, by the year 2000, cancer will emerge as the number one cause of death in the United States". They further pointed out that, not only is the incidence of many cancers rising, but that treatment, despite the introduction of radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy, is still largely ineffective. Indeed, these authors argued that the " success in the treatment of cancer plateaued in the 1970s, and no real advances have been made since then".

While Simone and co-workers are correct and the age adjusted mortality rate for cancer is soon likely to surpass that for diseases of the heart, this situation easily could have been prevented. In 1966. Dr. Raymond Shambeiger discovered that cancer patients displayed depressed selenium blood levels. Together with Dr. Douglas Frost, he then established that, in the United States, there was an inverse relationship between cancer incidence and mortality and selenium levels in soils and crops. Furthermore in 1977, Schrauzer and his colleagues' discovered that, in the 27 countries they surveyed, cancer mortality was inversely proportional to the amount of selenium in the typical national diet.