News digest – lung cancer campaign, gene patenting, night shifts and more

Catch up on the headlines

• An NHS campaign launched this week highlights that a persistent cough can be a possible sign of lung cancer. There’s more information about this important campaign in our news story.

• Figures released on Wednesday showed that the number of bowel cancer patients admitted to hospital as an emergency remains “stubbornly” high, at around one in five. Read more in our news story.

• We were pleased to see the Mirror highlighting persistent heartburn as a potential sign of oesophageal cancer. The article quotes Dr Tim Underwood, who’s running the New York Marathon with his colleagues to raise vital funds for our Catalyst Club.

• There were two fascinating viewpoints about the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling that human DNA can’t be patented. First up Dr Michael Wosnick discussed why his initial elation at the decision might need to be tempered.

• And the Telegraph had a balanced analysis of the pros and cons of gene patenting as a way of encouraging innovation in medicine.

• Men get breast cancer too, pointed out this article in the Daily Mail.

• The New York Times published this thoughtful piece about deciding when to tell your friends and family you have cancer.

• Do you know what a ‘genome’ is? We liked this Wellcome Trust blog post about its survey of public understanding of science.

• The Express and Guardian both ran stories about night shifts and breast cancer. The study in question only found a link between night shifts and breast cancer for the 28 women who’d spent at least 30 years in jobs where they worked night shifts at least half of the time. We’ve looked at the broader evidence on night shifts and breast cancer here.

• Brain Tumour Research warned that funding for brain tumour research is “seriously lagging behind” that for other cancers. Read more on the BBC.

• Could ‘talking’ cigarette packets that play a recorded message when they’re opened help smokers quit their habit? The Mirror featured some early-stage research looking to answer this question.

And finally

• The NHS celebrated its 65th birthday. Among the volumes of coverage this generated we particularly liked this list of NHS facts from Roy Lilly. And we also spotted this excellent animated guide to the recent NHS reforms.