Cancer poses danger because of its unregulated growth, development of resistant subclones, and metastatic spread to vital organs. We currently lack quantitative theory for how preventive measures and post-diagnostic interventions are predicted to affect risks of a life threatening cancer. We evaluate how continuous measures such as life style changes and traditional treatments affect both neoplastic growth and the frequency of resistant clones. We then compare and contrast preventive and post-diagnostic interventions assuming that only a single lesion progresses to invasive carcinoma during the life of an individual, and resection either leaves residual cells, or metastases are undetected. Whereas prevention generally results in more positive therapeutic outcomes than post-diagnostic interventions, this advantage is substantially lowered should prevention initially fail to arrest tumour growth. We discuss these results and other important mitigating factors that need to be taken into consideration in a comparative understanding of preventive and post-diagnostic interventions.