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Submitted by PatientsEngage on 8 February 2015

Broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby – son of a BBC legend – tells Charlie Cooper how his father’s candour informed the family’s attitude to coping with illness

Britain in 1965 was not a country that talked about cancer. So when one of the most recognisable men in Britain, the veteran broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, decided in October 1965 to go public with the fact that he was suffering from it, the announcement stunned the country.

“The newspapers, when he said: ‘I have got cancer’, responded with front-page stories,” says his son Jonathan Dimbleby, himself now a veteran broadcaster. “A lot of them said this is an extraordinary breakthrough, because cancer really was taboo then. It was not something you discussed. It often didn’t go on to a death certificate, rather like HIV later in the century.”

The reasons for the taboo are complex, but were in part because people were “terrified”, Dimbleby believes. “There was also a vague association with the idea that the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons; that there was some punishment involved with cancer. People understood it very little and it was treated as a secret. He broke the taboo and, I think, was the first public figure to do so. It had great impact.”

Dimbleby was 21 when his father died from testicular cancer later that year. Had he seen how openly the disease is now discussed in British public life, his dad would have marvelled at how far the country had come – and “unquestionably”, he would have admired and been moved by the life of Mr Sutton, says the 69-year-old.

“He was embarrassed by the fact of having testicular cancer and he took a long time to go and see his doctor, with the result that the cancer had spread,” Dimbleby says.

If he had gone sooner, there is a good chance he would have survived. Our increasing openness about cancer; the fact that it encourages more people to know and understand the symptoms and not to feel ashamed is, in Dimbleby’s eyes, an “entirely positive” phenomenon.

But Britain still lags behind many similarly wealthy nations in its cancer survival rates. For many common cancers – of the lung, colon, stomach and ovary – we are below the European average. Most experts believe that the reason is late diagnosis.

The responsibility for that, Dimbleby believes, must be partly shouldered by GPs.

“Others(GPs), I’m afraid – and I have come across them – are too casual; don’t bother to keep up to date with latest information and tend towards a hearty, robust, ‘You’ll be alright, mate’ attitude. They are a liability.”

Patients, he says, should be more willing to seek assurance, even about innocuous-seeming symptoms – a persistent sore throat, constipation or diarrhoea – that might point to an underlying cancer.

“I think if I had to choose between a little bit of hypochondria which means you’re safe and an ebullient disregard and death, it’s quite an easy choice for me,” he said. “There will be people that [visit their GP] on a repetitive basis, but part of me says that’s the name of the GP’s game.”

As for his own health, he verges “toward the hypochondriac end of the spectrum”.

He also watches his diet and has noticed the impact on his general wellbeing of losing six pounds in recent months – and with one in every 20 cancers linked to being overweight or obese, he is unflinching in his diagnosis for further reducing the UK’s cancer rates – cigarette packet-style health warnings on sugary and fatty food.

“What do we do with smoking? We say: ‘Smoking kills you’. Why don’t we say: ‘Too much fat kills you’, ‘too much sugar kills you’? Perhaps that is a bit extreme, but why not ‘this is a high-fat product’, ‘this is a high-sugar product’? That’s what we need: health warnings on food. I don’t see why not.

“We have more than 50 per cent of the adult population overweight or obese – this is devastating for cancers, for heart disease, for diabetes. It makes you shake your head in frustration. The Government, he says, is guilty of  “pussyfooting” around the food industry and needs to take a “much tougher line”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/the-jonathan-dimbleby-doctrine-you-dont-beat-cancerby-not-talking-about-it-9436604.html

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