Loss of key data when changing registered gender with GP means thousands are not invited to routine exams

Thousands of transgender patients in England are missing out on vital cancer screening because of the way their GP records are drawn up, experts have warned.

Everyone registered as female with their GP is automatically invited to breast screening from the age of 50 to 70, and to regular cervical screenings from 25 to 64.

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Scientists continue to rethink the idea that moderate drinking offers health benefits.

A new report says that 13 percent of cancers are linked to bacteria or viruses. Vaccines and treatments offer powerful protection.

UK nations saw largest falls in diagnosis of lung, breast, colorectal and skin cancers in 2020, figures show

The UK can expect a “tsunami of missed cancers”, leading experts have said, after an international study found that diagnoses fell sharply during the pandemic.

Preliminary figures from the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership, presented to delegates at the World Cancer Congress in Geneva, compared data on the instance and stage of cancer diagnosis in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and the UK, before and during the pandemic.

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Readers comment on an article taking a different view of life after treatment from that presented by the Princess of Wales

I’m grateful to Hilary Osborne for helping me understand why the Princess of Wales’s video left me so disquieted ( Kate’s recovery is great news – but be wary of a soft-focus view of life after chemo, 11 September ). I had stage 2, grade 2 invasive breast cancer last Christmas, with talk of chemotherapy after the tumour biopsy – until genomic testing gave me a reprieve. So I “got off lightly”, and need to “look on the bright side”, as some friends unhelpfully remind me.

There are some silver linings, but all cancer is crap. And even without chemotherapy, I still feel greyed-out. My heart aches for Kate, and broadly speaking I’m a royalist. But did her PR team really have to add so much saccharine? And now I feel just a bit more rubbish about myself and my failure to fully thrive after my own tough, but less tough, year.
Ali Hutchison
Dorchester, Dorset

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Some people with form of skin cancer that once had grim prognosis now live long enough to die from other causes

More than half of people diagnosed with advanced melanoma now survive for at least 10 years when they receive a double hit of immunotherapy drugs, a trial has found.

The combined treatment has transformed survival rates for a form of skin cancer that once had a grim prognosis, with some patients now living long enough that they die from other causes.

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The £42m Transform project will recruit thousands of men, to spot early signs of cancer that affects one in eight in UK

A £42m screening trial aimed at revolutionising the treatment of prostate cancer has been launched in the UK.

Thousands of men will be involved in its initial phase, which will begin in a few months. Several hundred thousand volunteers could be recruited as the programme progresses in coming years, say the trial’s organisers.

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I hope people took comfort from the royal video. But a film made after my treatment would have been greyer and grottier, perhaps more typical

I am trying to imagine what a film announcing my recovery from cancer would have looked like. Probably a bit like a trailer for a new zombie film rather than a Flake advert. Probably nothing like the video released by the Princess of Wales to mark her emergence from treatment.

For wandering through wheat fields I would substitute tackling an overgrown garden that I had not had the energy to do anything with for more than a year – before having to have a sit down because I was so knackered. For a contemplative lean against a tree I would substitute a rest against a lamp-post on the way to work for a quiet sob. For shiny hair and complexion I would substitute what one of my doctors described as “a sort of greyness” that seems to linger on patients for a while after chemo.

Hilary Osborne is the Guardian’s money and consumer editor

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A woman emerging from chemotherapy feels obliged to be filmed in a wheatfield to appease the public. What does that say about the monarchy, and us?

I wonder if we will come to look back on that supposed great virtue of our age – controlling the narrative – and see it for the cornered form of submission it so often is? I felt nothing but immense pity for the cancer-stricken Princess of Wales before the release of her intimate family video yesterday , and the sheer weirdness of the resulting enterprise has only magnified the pathos of her situation. Watching the three-minute film, shot by some ad man, I wondered who could possibly feel it was anything but sad that a recovering post-chemo mother should feel that this is her best option for keeping “well-wishers” at bay a little longer.

A lot of people could, it seems from the feverish coverage since it dropped – meaning that convention demands I couch the notion that the existence of the video is in any way weird as “my unpopular opinion”. In which case, allow me to chuck in another unpopular opinion: this sort of thing appeals precisely to the grownups who when Diana died demanded that the then Queen leave off comforting her grieving 12- and 15-year-old grandsons in Scotland to come back to London – in effect to look after them instead. The selfishness and self-importance of a certain stripe of loyal subject is at best demandingly prurient and at worst grotesque. We hear a lot about the male gaze. The royalist’s gaze could do with more unpicking.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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