Health promotion

Aha! Another mildly daft poll, about the daft British public, women in this case, and their erroneous beliefs on cancer risk, in women. This one is a bread and butter error, arising from the cumulative effect of all dopey, disconnected cancer awareness everywhere. Once more, gender specific cancers are thought of as being a greater problem for a gender (in this case women) than non-gender specific cancers are.

Today is not the day to be working for a breast cancer charity. Staff will be drafting Press Releases and copy for the websites, the phones will be ringing off the hook, some callers will be distressed, others angry, the press will be pressing and at the back of the staff’s mind will be the uncertainty.

This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. (BCAM) Deep sigh. This is the annual high point of my cancer awareness scepticism, stimulated by breast cancer charities and their crappy business model that muddles awareness for health, with their brand recognition and market share. See legions of my previous posts….

Yesterday (Thursday 1 September) I read this piece on the Channel 4 news website. It's about a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine which apparently says says the risks of breast cancer over diagnosis are ‘not made clear’. Ears pricked up.

Today is the start of Blue September in the UK. It's a vital initiative that might shift the public discourse on cancer onto a different, more productive track. 

Or not. But I can dream.

Yesterday, the BBC news website presented a bowel cancer awareness story, originated by Cancer Research UK, entitled ‘Bowel cancer awareness stubbornly low’. Their tone was a tad patronising - the BBC’s, not CR-UK’s – using the phrase ‘stubbornly low’. ‘Stubborn’ as in ‘asses’, I suppose. Ah yes! The stupid British public.

And here's more - on the CR-UK poll on fear and cancer mentioned in the similarly title post just below, numbered 1.

This time CR-UK's Poll missed out the options for us British to be frightened of terrorism, car accidents, murder and plane crashes - alternatives used previously in these ‘Top of the Shocks’ polls. Instead, they stuck a possibly random selection of cancers into the mix - breast, bowel, lung, prostate, malignant melanoma, cervical, ovarian, pancreatic, oesophageal, leukaemia, brain, and testicular.

CR-UK has released some non-riot news into August – some polling yet again, on  the unfortunate British and their ‘fear of cancer’. I’ve been here twice before, just like CR-UK, in a couple of posts from 2010.  

Goodness knows if anyone has researched the anthropology or sociology of British women’s engagement with breast screening. I don’t feel inclined to search literature today to find out if they have, so I’ll stick with pondering, for now. 

Overrated? Dangerous?  Sometimes, yes. Advocacy by people and patients with a personal connection to a health issue is not an unequivocal good. The public interest is not always well served by involving patients/sufferers in health lobbying.