ASCO = American Society for Clinical Oncology
Is the major site I turn to when I want accurate info relating to cancer and treatment.
I would trust this American website more than I do NHS Choices. Why? I have had run-ins with NHS Choices re their misleading and inaccurate copy. (See below).
ASCO’s latest advice
The choices you make about diet, exercise, and other habits can affect your overall health as well as your risk for developing cancer and other serious diseases. It’s also important to follow recommendations for cancer screening tests, especially if you are a cancer survivor.
Screening tests are used to find cancer in people who have no symptoms. Screening gives you the best chance of finding cancer as early as possible – while it’s small and before it hasn’t spread. And just because you have survived one round of cancer, doesn’t automatically say it won’t return in another form.
Their website provides information on healthy lifestyle choices that can help lower your cancer risk, and cancer screening test recommendations by age and gender.
- help lower your cancer risk,
- and cancer screening test recommendations by age and gender. So go to https://www.cancer.org/healthy/find-cancer-early/cancer-screening-guidelines/screening-recommendations-by-age.html?utm_campaign=maynationalnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=acxiom&utm_content=nontst#20-29
It will ask 2 questions: What is your gender and what is your age. You click on these, then up comes info about what tests you might consider.
Because I have twice queried inacurrate advice on NHS Choices, yet when I pointed out that they had posted misleading copy, instead of checking facts, they tried to dismiss me as I wasn’t medically-trained.
- When I was bitten by a rabid dog in Slovakia. I looked up NHS Choices to see what it had to say about rabies, and was horrified at inaccurate information on the site. Contacted them, but they were dismissive as I was only a patient. So I contacted World Health Organisation (health arm of United Nations), and they tore the NHS off a strip. This time they had to listen, and came back to me to ask if I approved of the wording on new copy they were posting.
- The NHS assumes that as we have had an immunisation programme in place for so long, there isn’t any need to know about Polio – forgetting that around 600,000 of us in Britain who caught polio, and survived, won’t ever lose the paralysis that will stay with us for the rest of our lives. So doctors aren’t taught about how to treat and handle us. And NHS gives no sensible guidance. The website mentions Post Polio Syndrome (a side effect that affects about 25%) but nothing about what can be done to help those still struggling to cope with inadequate NHS care.
UK Charity websites
- Cancer Research UK is highly rated by overseas cancer hospitals, but is really about research, rather than treatment. It is rated highly by its peers around the world.
- Breast Cancer Care is good, but doesn’t have the funding to produce videos like US charities
- Macmillan – they are getting funding from the NHS, and it shows. Ask them about new initiatives, and if the NHS doesn’t provide this, they don’t have a view (obviously under NHS thumb).
Other ASCO sites
This is another good site – try it and see.