The fear of cancer is understandable. But given the medical progress made against this family of diseases, that fear is in some ways outdated and excessive, leading to great harm all by itself. Curing Cancerphobia reveals the fascinating historical and psychological roots of our fear of cancer, and documents the dramatic health and financial impacts for both individuals and society when that fear exceeds the risk.

• Fear of cancer drives millions for whom screening is not recommended to screen anyway, producing tens of thousands of emotionally damaging false positives and costing the US health care system an estimated $9.2 billion a year. It also causes many people for whom screening is recommended to avoid it altogether, and some of those people suffer worse outcomes when their disease is discovered only when it becomes symptomatic and harder to treat.

• Perceptive modern screening technologies often identify types of common cancers – breast, prostate, thyroid – that are ‘overdiagnosed’; they fit the cellular criteria of cancer under a microscope, but they will never cause harm in a person's lifetime. But when people hear the word "cancer" in their diagnosis, they understandably choose more aggressive and risky treatments than their clinical conditions require. The treatments are essentially ‘fear-ectomies’, and they kill hundreds, cause severe side effects in thousands, and cost the health care system at least $5.3 billion a year.

• Cancerphobia has enormous consequences for society. Fear that “everything causes cancer” leads governments to spend billions more to reduce cancer risk than it invests to reduce the risk of other major killers, including heart disease, which kills roughly 10% more U.S. citizens per year.

• Consumers spend billions on vitamins and supplements, organic food, and other products that promise to reduce our risk of cancer, but don’t. Excessive fear of cancer causes resistance to potentially beneficial technologies like nuclear power and fluoridation of tap water.

• Curing Cancerphobia closes with solutions to help patients and health care providers think carefully about choices regarding cancer screening and how to respond to a diagnosis of a low-risk type of the disease. It also describes the early and growing movement in medicine to reduce the harm of overdiagnosis of cancer.

REVIEWS

In a highly engaging exposition of the emperor of nosophobias, Ropeik details how the gravity force of cancerphobia warps risk perception, leading to personal or societal harms and legislative misdirection. He provides tools to avoid fear-dominated fast thinking and to employ slow thinking techniques to reach the goal of informed health decisions by patients, health care professionals, and policy makers.

Barnett Kramer, MD, MPH, Lisa Schwartz Foundation for Truth in Medicine; former Director of the Division of Cancer Prevention, US National Cancer Institute

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Cancer more so than any other disease induces fear. Often this leads to rash and irrational actions regarding screening and treatment. In simple English, David Ropeik explains the need for every patient to calmly and rationally research and understand the diseases known as cancer and how our understanding of them and their varying biologic behavior has evolved.

Dr. Otis Brawley, MD, MACP, FRCP(L), Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins University; former Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the American Cancer Society

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In his timely and important book, David Ropeik shines a bright light on how misperceptions about cancer risks can lead to large costs to individuals and society. Ropeik has done the research and knows how to tell a compelling story.

Peter Neumann, ScD, Director, Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health, Tufts Medical Center; Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine

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In this lively and engaging book, health risk expert David Ropeik helps us understand our fear of cancer and how we can—individually and collectively—overcome the many harms done by this fear.

Virginia A. Moyer, MD, MPH, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health

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As an oncologist and caregiver of a spouse with cancer, I felt very close to the issues raised and the coverage of the subject matter. I hope that this book will reach a broad audience to stimulate an open discussion on this topic.

John L. Marshall, MD, Georgetown University Hospital