Is it just me or did they cross the line?

Here comes WCRF again. I feel inclined to add ‘offensive’ to my adjectives. 

 

They popped up in the media this week (9th August) taking a line on breast cancer, pointing out that ‘UK breast cancer rates four times higher than Eastern Africa’. The Guardian, amongst others, picked it up and reproduced it as health news.

 

It would be breast cancer, of course - the UK media's preferred partner in health stories. 'Other cancers are available...' 

 

Here are a series of quotes from the WCRF press release.

 

1.    ‘Part of the difference is likely to be because the UK is better at diagnosing and recording breast cancer cases. But WCRF has warned that lifestyle is also an important reason for the difference.’

 

Damn right we’re better at diagnosing and recording breast cancer cases than the East African nations are. They have many other more pressing disease surveillance issues. HIV AIDS, for instance. We’ve also got drinking water, housing, fuel, the welfare state, free education, leisure time, longevity and stable democracy. The natural corollary of all of these is an entirely different disease profile in Western Europe. We live long enough to acquire significant amounts of chronic disease and East Africans battle infection and die decades younger. I wonder which population is worse off.......? For WCRF it's clear. Selective use of otherwise shocking data on Eastern African women's health is a great vehicle for warning us about our lifestyle choices. 

 

We screen for breast cancer. That increases UK incidence of breast cancer, too. I'm keen to avoid stereotyping Eastern African women into lives of famine and deprivation but I've a shrewd suspicion that most of them don't get close to free three yearly mammograms. That will also help keep numbers of diagnoses down. 

 

And still WCRF are wittering on about lifestyle.... If WCRF want to draw attention to British women's poor lifestyle choices there are more direct ways of doing it than holding up the health and lifestyles of East African women as somehow ideal or admirable. The word 'patronising' comes to mind. Managing to patronise women in East Africa and women in the UK for different reasons but to the same effect is quite an achievement. Contrary to what this stupid press release says, the statistics have almost no meaning for women in the UK for their own health. It demonstrates an insensitively cock-eyed view of the 'lifestyle' choices of many women in Eastern African countries. 

 

Ah yes! The lifestyle choices of East African women! Is that the same lifestyle that results in average adult life expectancies as follows – as given by UNICEF, and in Djibouti's case, on Wikipedia? You know, I think it might be.

 

I've used the countries that WCRF itself mentioned in its 'notes to editors' on their press release. Two islands are missing. 

 

In the UK adult life expectancy is about 80.....

 

Even if 'age adjustment' of the figures, to compensate for the differences in age profile of the UK and East African populations is still a robust calculation in such divergent circumstances - which I doubt - this is still a wholly misguided and offensive 'story'. 

 

2.    ‘Women in Eastern Africa drink much less alcohol than women in the UK and obesity levels are much lower. Breastfeeding rates in Eastern Africa are also much higher.’

 

'Obesity levels are much lower'. Ow! Anyone recall Michael Buerk’s account of the famine in Ethiopia in 1984? And all similar accounts since. At least WCRF didn't mention activity levels and sell us the idea that a brisk daily walk to a distant water supply with a bucket was an excellent lifestyle choice too.

 

Breast feeding rates are high because these women are poor and have no choice (baby milk manufacturers nothwithstanding) not because they have are better off and well educated, which increases breast feeding rates in the UK. They do the right thing because they are deprived of any opportunity to do the wrong thing. That may also explain lower alcohol intake, too. It's not a choice then, is it? So WCRF, don't hold it up to us to admire.

 

3.    Dr Rachel Thompson, Deputy Head of Science for WCRF, said: ‘The fact that breast cancer rates in Eastern Africa are so much lower than in the UK is a stark reminder that every year in this country, thousands of women are diagnosed with a case of cancer that could have been prevented.’

 

Words fail me. The red mist descends. No, it flaming well isn’t. It’s a stark reminder of the importance of development charities and their initiatives - Live Aid, Comic Relief, Save the Children, Oxfam, the Red Cross et al. If significant numbers of East African women ever get old enough to get breast and most of the other cancers it’ll actually be good news, since it’ll mean life expectancy would have increased hugely. 

 

Behold, the idiocy of the shiny happy cancer evangelists spotting a statistical fact about East African women, but blinded to the wider reality of their lives. If you're going to play with the geopolitics of health, make sure you understand it first.

 

Do development charities find this offensive, as I do?  

 

Wind your necks in, WCRF. Do better. Come up with a convincing story and cut out the fatuous, vacuous and offensive.

 

Don’t confuse behaviours that coincidentally protect against breast cancer with freedom to make informed lifestyle choices. There's a difference between healthy lifestyle choices and an existence. Respect it.

 

Breast cancer here is a very different story from breast cancer in the developing world, so leave ours here.