Cancer culture clash?
If we over-stress the need for cancer patients to be courageous fighters, are we running the risk of denying them the chance of a peaceful end to life? Cancer, in its many different forms, is rarely out of the news....
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It was Big Tobacco, not Trump, that wrote the post-truth rule book
After two chaotic months as president, Donald Trump is widely credited with rewriting the political rule book. We are witnessing Trump’s new era of post-fact politics, where distraction and obfuscation are central, and critical stories are dismissed as “fake news”....
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A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer
There are perhaps as many cancer stories as people with cancer. There are also many ways of telling them – but a musical is one of the more risky. A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer is described as...
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The Unequal Cost of Cancer
Information released on World Cancer Day earlier this month revealed that although more people are being diagnosed with cancer, more people now are surviving the disease. Cancer Research UK tells us that 1 in 2 people born after 1960 in...
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Catching Cancer?
Everyone is haunted by stories of cancers that are diagnosed too late. This week guidance from NICE aimed to help with what it called ‘a symptom based approach’ for general practice in England. Promising to bring together lists of symptoms...
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UNSILENCING CANCER
One view of ‘patient engagement’ is that it is about people taking greater responsibility for their health. This take on patient engagement coincides with the rise in a blame narrative in which people are increasingly told that their health is...
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Cancer Charities and the fight for Public Health (and Media Profile)
Charity campaigns designed to shock are more and more commonplace. What does this tell us about the charity sector, and do these campaigns impact negatively on the ‘real’ work a charity undertakes?
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Preserving the Fertility of Cancer Patients: Necessary Treatment or Additional Luxury?
A diagnosis of cancer is often devastating. Prognosis varies greatly and treatments can be debilitating; even as they cure, treatments may cause significant and lasting damage. One possible consequence is the loss of fertility, (a significant risk in many radio-...
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We’re all doomed! – What happens when normality is so dangerous that it might kill you?
When driving through the town of Omagh the other day I found myself (somewhat unsuccessfully!) trying to quote the great Ulrich Beck from memory. We had just driven past a health promotion poster showing the midriff of a man wearing...
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White fluff