Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Prostate cancer action plan urged in UK

While I am grateful that the BBC has deigned to report on a specifically male health issue and astonished that they put it on the front page this entire article manages to discuss prostate cancer without anywhere describing the sufferers as "men" except once, and that's in a quote. They're "patients", it seems.

A quick search for "breast cancer" in the archive popped up plenty of hits and the half-dozen or so that I checked had no trouble identifying the sufferers as "women", although I have to admit, that the first such hit discussed a male breast cancer victim being denied access to the "miracle drug" Herceptin, like a number of female sufferers recently reported. Then again, the article also says:

'However, Dr Emma Pennery from Breast Cancer Care said there were concerns about Herceptin's general availability, and even more so for men.

"I think it's likely to be problematic because there isn't equal access for women already across the UK and the difficulty is we don't fully understand its usage in men.

"All the clinical trials to date have been on women," said Dr Pennery.
'

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