Cancer charities go bad

I have rather lost track of what is going on with cancer and the elderly in the UK. I’ve no idea how the cancer voluntary sector see elderly people and their place on the cancer agenda. How do they approach it in the policy, information and support, campaigning, research and awareness spheres?

So. Get that train of thought back on the rails.

The New Year began with a BBC story about inequity in cancer research spend. Whilst reading it I chewed on my own sofa.

I’m training my beady eye on breast cancer charities, picking over their joint response to last week’s outcome of the breast screening review. A bit of context: I refused breast screening last year, based on the inadequate information on risks that was available to me. Now I am better informed via the Review I’ll probably continue unscreened as, for me, the benefit isn’t big enough to risk the risks.

The Review is out. I've just scan read the summary, from The Lancet online and comment in various places.

I was a breast screening refusenik already. Now I will continue to be a breast screening refusenik. But a more confident one....

I am not immune to breast cancer. I know that. Neither am I reckless with my health. I am cross however, that overdiagnosis by breast screening has been warned about since at least 1988, and no one has ever bothered women and their pretty little heads with this.

I spotted this phrase on a recent tweet from Macmillan Cancer Support – ‘Cancer is the toughest fight most of us will ever face’. Hmm. That’s quite an assertion. ‘Toughest’? That’s a superlative and a comparison. So Macmillan knows cancer is tougher than all other conditions, like….. well, name them, please.

And ‘most of us’? Hmmm, again.

This post combines my interest in cancer awareness with my concerns about the absence of the elderly from most cancer charities’ agendas. I suggest two things. That 1) the single issue cancer charity sector should cast a properly self-critical eye on their role in ‘cancer awareness’ and 2) that it is now obvious that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of cancer patient - and that’s an old one.

I recently sent in my response to the consultation on informed choice, information and NHS cancer screening programmes. Here is the nubbins.

I know this is a bit old hat now, but bear with me. It gives a frame of reference. Chapter Six of the Cancer Reform Strategy (CRS) highlighted specific equality target groups who experience inequality and established the National Cancer Equality Initiative (NCEI) which still exists, to investigate and reduce inequalities in implementing the CRS.

How’s it going with old people and cancer then? Not terribly well, I respectfully suggest. Despite the magnitude of demographic upheaval, substantial engagement by single tumour cancer charities with the issues around cancer in old age isn’t obvious.

I’d like this to change please. Thank you.

There was another publication on the unintended consequences of mammography last week, so off I went to look at it. Ha! Bless those Scandewegians. Who knew they’d  turn out to be so much trouble on breast screening? Norwegians this time. It’s been Danes. They host the Nordic Cochrane Group in Copenhagen who stirred things up in the past, questioning just what on earth breast screening is doing to women.…..