Almost three in four Australian children consume too much sugar, 91.5% of young people don’t get enough exercise, and we’re among the most obese people in the world.
Nothing to be embarrassed about.
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Long gone are the days when breast cancer was seen as a tumour with an underlying relationship with oestrogen. The picture is much more complex.
Billions were expected to be saved from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme – but surprisingly the budget only outlines $252 million in savings.
Lukas Coch/AAP
The big surprise about this year’s health budget was what wasn’t there – billions of dollars in expected savings from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Something to be worried about, or not?
Screening by Shutterstock
Screening can save lives, which is why the NHS offers checks for breast, cervical and bowel cancers. Breast screening tries to pick up cancer at an early stage when it may be more treatable. Cervical screening…
Well-informed men see prostate cancer testing as an individual decision rather than a public health priority.
Miguel Pires da Rosa/Flickr
Screening for prostate cancer using the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test for men with no symptoms is controversial: experts are divided, and Australians are not routinely well-informed. Prostate cancer…
If we want to know whether screening saves lives, we need to show a reduction in the cancer death rate rather than an increase in the survival rate.
Steven Depolo/Flickr
Cancer screening is beneficial when it’s able to prevent people dying from cancer. And it should clearly be adopted where there’s evidence showing this. But using cancer survival rates to promote screening…
Across 38 years in tobacco control, I have been asked countless times in media interviews if I ever smoked. It’s often an early question. I always unhesitatingly explain that I did: I stopped in my mid…
Most people overestimate the benefits and underestimate the harms of medical intervention.
Barbara M./Flickr
“It might do me some good and it won’t hurt to give it a go.” How often have you heard a phrase like this? Most people have naïve optimism about medical care. That’s the finding of a systematic review…
We’re yet to find an alternative way to better detect breast cancer in women with dense breasts.
CristinaMuraca/Shutterstock
We’ve known for some time that women with dense breasts are at higher risk of breast cancers that are difficult to detect by mammography. To address this problem, 19 US states have introduced laws requiring…
For many men, the down sides of PSA testing outweigh the benefits.
Gerald Streiter/Flickr
Cancer Council Australia and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia yesterday released new draft guidelines to help GPs counsel men who ask about prostate cancer tests. They advise GPs to explain…
The Beatles’ George Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001.
Voteprime
Lung cancer kills more people each year than any other cancer because it’s common and because the majority of patients only start to show symptoms after the disease is already advanced. Despite this there…
Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, AMREP Department of Medicine, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne & Senior Medical Oncologist and Palliative Care Physician, Melbourne Oncology Group, Cabrini Haematology and Oncology Centre, Wattletree Road, Malvern, Monash University