As one of the most common forms of illness, cancer is heavily reported on within the news. The reasons for the reports are varied, and putting prominent deaths aside, preliminary studies have revealed the reporting of cancer seems to be dominated by new scientific breakthroughs that lead us ever closer to a cure, or alternately, revelations or reminders of habits, vices or part of our environment that cause cancer – in short, cancer is reported with hope or with warning.
I first saw the phrase ‘Everything Gives You Cancer’ as a headline in an article of The Private Eye – a British satirical magazine-newspaper, published fortnightly. The article was featured on the cover of ‘The Private Eye Annual 2004’, edited by Ian Hislop, and reports a spoof news event where U.S. scientists reveal everything a person has ever eaten, inhaled, sprayed onto themselves, or even brushed up against, could cause cancer.
The Private Eye is playing up to the constant stream of warnings in the media about new research that suggests yet another aspect of life or our environment can kill us.
A brief look at the reporting of cancer in the media, makes the Private Eye headline more funny perhaps, because of its element of truth.
In mainstream and alternative news sources, obesity, and of course smoking, are some of the more significant players in reports of what may cause cancer. Stress has also found itself in the mix, along with everything from passive smoking, to common viruses, to arsenictainted water, to coffee.
Electric lighting has been the point of blame for breast cancer in a report from the Globe and Mail:
The high rate of breast cancer in industrialized countries has long puzzled medical researchers, but a team of U.S. scientists has discovered a possible explanation for why women in developed countries are at high risk of developing the disease.
The answer at first glance may seem unlikely: nighttime exposure to electric lighting.
In a major breakthrough, researchers have linked exposure to light at night to the growth in breast-cancer tumours. The tumours grew because artificial light interfered with the ability of women to create melatonin, the hormone that regulates the body’s daytime and night rhythms.
The discovery holds major public-health implications because most women in industrial societies turn on lights at night in their homes and offices and may potentially be at risk from this exposure.
And even clean air is being held reponsible for skin cancer in an article in Bloomberg.com:
New Zealand’s clean air and the thin southern hemisphere ozone layer are contributing to one of the world’s worst rates of skin cancer, according to a study by government scientists and the University of Colorado.
The article continues with information about the disease, emphasising the danger New Zealanders could potentially face:
Skin cancer kills about 300 people annually in New Zealand, a nation of 4.1 million people, and costs about NZ$33 million ($23 million) a year, according to a University of Otago study in 2000. About 75 percent of the deaths are from melanoma, the most-deadly type, which occurs in the population at three times the rate in the U.S.
Not surprisingly, with so many different things being blamed for causing cancer, contradictions arise. A critical article about this type of reporting in the sector of health was run in The Times online, and again in The Australian. Lois Rogers writes about the contradicting warnings issued through the media about what causes cancer, particularly in regards to sunlight versus Vitamin D deficiency.
Like many other consumers Jennings is baffled: the more health advice that we receive, the more confusing, if not downright contradictory, it can seem.
In the past few months, for example, scientific journals have reported that coffee might cause fatal heart disease — and that it is full of cancer-preventing antioxidants.
Milk, which contains calcium, is good for the bones — but its fat is bad for the arteries. Red meat is bad for the heart — but high-protein diets, claim some, can help to avoid obesity. A high-fibre diet is good — except that an American study now says that it does not, after all, prevent cancers of the digestive system.
Within days of each other last month, one study was published claiming that an aspirin a day reduced heart disease in women by 25% — but another said that one in 10 of those who take aspirin is at risk of intestinal bleeding and a possible early death.
Science is complex and good health involves balancing one risk against another. But for ordinary consumers, sifting the plethora of different advice is becoming an ever more complex task.
With all of these contradicting reports, Rogers asks if health advice is actually doing us harm?
It may be so, but then what is the alternative? Perhaps the excessive amount of reporting on what causes cancer is a positive thing, because the gatekeepers of news don’t appear to be keeping much from us. No ideological pattern in the reporting of cancer causes has become apparent, and as cancer research continues within so many different organisations, their differing findings appear to be given opportunities to a public voice.
Maybe the claims that you could get cancer whether you breathe polluted or clean air, stay in or out of the sun, and drink coffee or not, are so widespread they are almost farcical, but surely a media that presents all the points of view – even the contradicting ones – and allows us to make up our own minds, is an ideal one.
