Reality TV celebrity Jade Goody, who lost her life to cancer at the young age of 27, seems to have had a profound effect on women in the UK. Goody’s televised battle with cervical cancer, has successfully raised women’s awareness of the disease, and encouraged more and more women to regularly get cervical screenings.

The number of screenings in the UK was slowly falling, and many women were ignoring there reminders, and not bothering with the tests at all. It’s thought that Jade’s public battle has been a reality check for women, and has prompted them to take action before it’s too late. The number of cervical screenings has drastically increased since Goody’s death, and numbers still seem to be on the rise. This surprise increase has seen more and more younger women attending screenings all over the country.

On average, 4,500 lives are saved by these screenings every year, and early detection is key to the treatment of this cancer type. It was also reported that the turn around time for results are also on the rise. This increase in testing will in turn save thousands of more lives, and health care professionals hope that Jade’s story is not quickly forgotten, and that this number will continue to grow in the future.

Over the last few years there have been dramatic increases in the understanding of how cancer operates at a cellular level. There are now moves towards a more intelligent way of dealing with cancer that work with the body, and a gradual shift away from the toxicity of therapies like chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

This greater understanding has, in some quarters, changed the concept of what cancer actually is. A recent scientific paper suggests that a tumour has a lot of similarities to a wound, and has been likened to ‘a wound that doesn’t heal’. A wound induces rapid growth but then switches off the growth when the wound has healed – in cancer that ‘off switch’ fails.

We do know that a diet high in fresh fruit and vegetables can greatly reduce our chances of getting cancer, and also, being overweight can increase our chances of getting cancer. What has been missing up until now has been the fine detail of the processes involved.

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