It's hard to imagine that more than 17 million people will die annually from cancer in the year 2030, but that is what a cancer official with the United Nations predicted this week.

It's comforting for those concerned with secondhand smoke to know that public smoking bans are increasing all over the world, but that till won't make a huge and significant dent in cancer cases (although perhaps lung cancer cases). My take: the junk many of us eat and the pollution we are exposed to will be main cancer culprits in the future.

In what could be considered devastating, the same U.N. official stated that poor countries will suffer the most from this projected cancer increase due to limited health fiscal resources and a lack of treatments and associated therapy.