Headline News

It’s seems that never a day goes by without there being some sort of cancer story in the news. Recently there was a lot of news about Patrick Swayze who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And then Kylie of course who has been in the news loads ever since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2005. Most recently there was the story about how doctors did not initially diagnose her breast cancer.  

The good thing is that stories like this raise awareness of certain cancers and may encourage women to go for breast screening for example. The not so good thing is that these stories can cause distress and fear for some people, especially if they or someone they know has the same illness. And sometimes, they can do things like encourage wrong beliefs – that breast cancer is common in young women, for example, which it isn’t.

Headlines are there to get our attention and so they have to make an impact. But those that claim things like ‘New cancer treatment saves lives’ can also sometimes be misleading. Often a headline like this precedes a story about something new that’s been given to mice in a laboratory. While the results are encouraging it’ll likely be years before the treatment is given to a human being - and even longer before anyone knows just how much it might help.

Stories like this can cause so much disappointment for people. They can raise hopes – which then get dashed as they learn more about what’s really going on.

So I guess what I’m saying is be careful about what you read in the papers – and check out the facts.