A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the DNMT3B promoter polymorphism -149 C>T, have recently been shown increase susceptibility of an individual to lung cancer [2], breast cancer [23] and significantly associated with increased age-associated risk in HNPCC families [24], but not to head and neck squamous cell carcinoma in Taiwanese [33], HCC [34] and gastric cardiac adenocarcinoma in Chinese [35], and gastric cancer in a Japanese population [36]. The gene discussed is DNMT3B; the disease is head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.