Celebrity cancer hype skews messages
THE media storm that surrounds celebrities with cancer is excessively pessimistic and sends the wrong long-term public health messages, according to an editorial in The Lancet Oncology . Coverage of cases such as Kylie Minogue – whose 2005 breast cancer diagnosis prompted a 40% rise in screening bookings in the following two weeks – is typically short on facts but “heavy on what is often termed scare-mongering,” the article said. When UK reality TV star Jade Goody died of cervical cancer last year, the media did not report that she had previously ignored abnormal test results ...