According to a new study from the Netherlands, new cases of stomach cancer are expected to drop off by as much as 25% in the next decade in Europe. The reason? Better living conditions.

Stomach cancer is one of the most fast-acting and deadly forms of cancer, and it's thought that one's odd of stomach cancer are increased when they contract the Helicobacter pylori bacterium. The Helicobacter pylori bacterium is passed on between people sharing small spaces, and I think the indication here is that new housing in Holland, where living spaces are notoriously cramped, is allowing people more space and they're therefore passing on less illnesses. That having a bit of space could make such a vast difference on stomach cancer is pretty amazing. I am glad I live in a land of seemingly endless space.

Left-handed women under the age of 50 are more than twice as likely to develop breast cancer than those who are right-hand dominant.

What?

Yep, that's what a new study reveals.

This left-handed conclusion, published in the journal Epidemiology, comes from the study of 12,000 women in the Netherlands whose medical histories were followed for 13 years. Discounting all other factors -- lifestyle, environment, and other disease -- left-handers came up with a risk of breast cancer 1.39 times that of right-handers. For pre-menopausal women, the figure climbed to 2.41.

Women with early stage breast cancer now have a new tool at their disposal. The tool -- called MammaPrint -- is newly approved by the FDA and while it is not yet a perfect measure, it can be used along with other information to estimate whether breast cancer is likely to return in five or 10 years.

The value of this test, that measures through computer analysis the activity of 70 genes using a sample of tissue removed from a breast tumor, is that doctors and patients can better determine course of treatments.

MammoPrint offers two results -- high risk and low risk -- and accurately picked in studies which women were at low risk at least 90 percent of the time. However, for women who were told they were at high risk for recurrence as a result of the test, just 23 percent experienced a relapse.

"You can't go all the way to the bank with this test," says FDA official Dr. Steven Gutman who argues the test is still better than having no information at all.

Agendia, the Dutch maker of MammoPrint, is exploring ways to make this one-of-a-kind product available in the United States. It has been used in the Netherlands since 2005.

"This test has enormous implications for the short-term future of cancer research in general, and is one of the truly great breakthroughs of our time," says Cancer Blog reader Gregory Pawelski with whom I am grateful for sharing this story tip with me.

Billionaire Dutch businessman, philanthropist, outspoken environmentalist and wildlife conservationist Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, who owned the 81,000-acre Letterewe Estate in Scotland, as well as nature reserves in England and wetland reserves in the Netherlands, and who founded the Africa Parks Foundation (APF) developing parks in Malawi, Zambia and Ethiopia, has lost his life to pancreatic cancer.

Paul van Vlissingen and the van Vlissingen family are well-known in the Netherlands for the many generations of interest and efforts on behalf of wildlife. He was said to be involved in environmental causes on every continent. To promote responsible management of nature, he appeared in television programs with Prince Charles. In addition, he was a published author and spoke publicly on environmental causes.

A few excerpts from his obituary read:

"He supported human population control, but believed it could be attained only through choice and empowering women through education and equality."

Noting how as a boy Van Vlissingen spent much of his time outdoors, reading voraciously and writing poetry, his parents joked: "We have three children and a gypsy."

"He was convinced that continual change is the oxygen a company needs for its survival. He was also convinced that both fun and challenges in the working environment were important for all, and he evolved a managerial style which emphasized respect for, and investment in, people."

When Van Vlissingen was diagnosed with cancer, he founded the Van Vlissingen Cancer Fund in the Netherlands. Paul Fentener van Vlissingen was 65. Fascinating man.

The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment has issued a 264-page report Our Food Our Health, that is sure to create some heated discussion over which lifestyle habit -- smoking or diet -- actually contributes to the most disease and death. At the heart of the findings the Dutch indicate that a poor diet lacking in an abundance of disease prevention foods, like fish, fruit, and vegetables, cause more disease and death than smoking tobacco. According to these researchers, many scientists agree that at least 75 percent of diseases can be prevented by eating a healthy diet.

The study findings go on to state that each year, inadequate diet causes about 13,000 deaths in The Netherlands due to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Unhealthy diet habits are just as bad, if not worse, as smoking in terms of their effect on risk of disease and death. You hear that cancer diagnosis and death could be reduced by 50 percent with certain lifestyle changes. The emphasis is usually on smoking cessation. However, if these researchers are correct, and researchers worldwide are in agreement with them, then the conversation about cancer prevention will need to shift away from smoking and replace diet and obesity as the number one causes of diseases like cancer. Someone said, not too long ago, that obesity and diet would replace the spot smoking has dominated as the number one lifestyle risk for cancer. With research news like this, you can see the beginning of the new trend.