Cancer Research’s new study gives politicians another excuse to blame poor people

Cancer Research UK has published a new cancer study, specifically on death rates across the UK. Crucially, it identified enormous health disparities for people living in the most deprived areas of the country. Too any paying attention, this pointed to the deadly impacts of more than a decade of callous neoliberal capitalist policies.

However, the findings have triggered a wave of hand-wringing over people’s so-called lifestyle choices. This was with the obvious implication that poor people are to blame for their own worse off health. Of course, in reality, this couldn’t be further from the case – and it was shameful that anyone implied otherwise.

Cancer study: deaths higher for deprived communities

As the Guardian reported:

Cancer death rates are 60% higher for people living in the most deprived areas of the UK compared with those in more affluent areas, according to new analysis.

There are 28,400 extra cancer deaths across the UK each year due to deprivation, the equivalent of 78 additional deaths every day, Cancer Research UK found.

For all cancers combined in the UK, mortality rates are almost 1.6x higher in people living in the most deprived areas compared with the least (337 deaths per 100,000 against 217 deaths).

Crucially, it highlighted that:

Almost half (47%) of these were caused by lung cancer, where the death rate was almost three times higher in the most deprived areas.

Predictably, politicians, NHS officials, and medical scientists honed in on this. They were quick to point the finger at long waiting times for diagnosis treatment:

That cancer death rates are 60% higher in disadvantaged communities compared to the most affluent should shock no one. Trying to get a Doctor’s Appointment, trying to get a diagnosis, trying to understand and ask questions about a treatment pathway- you need to be practically a…

— Sorcha Eastwood MP (@SorchaEastwood) February 21, 2025

Meanwhile, the Independent quoted Health Secretary Wes Streeting saying:

Our new targets for cancer diagnosis and treatment will mean around an extra 100,000 patients are seen on time next year, and we have also started using the latest digital AI technologies to help catch the disease earlier

Symptoms of an underlying systemic problem

However, let’s be clear. While long waitlists for diagnosis, lack of GP appointments, and access to treatment in deprived areas is undoubtedly contributing to this, these are all simply symptoms of a more obvious underlying cause.

It was the mainstream liberal media outlet’s image choice that really underscored the problem with this. Crucially, it drove home a huge issue in the way the press and political establishment were interpreting the research.

In a cropped photo, it pictures a person lighting a cigarette into cupped hands. This sat above a caption that read:

Lung cancer death rates are almost three times higher in the most deprived areas of the UK

Straight away, that’s a choice to focus on smoking in its feature image. Yes, the report did find lung cancer caused the most mortalities. But a few things here. One: smoking is not the only driver of this. Poor air quality from industrial and commercial pollution is undoubtedly a factor. Two: the report explored multiple forms of cancer, not only lung cancer anyway.

What it immediately implies is that it’s people choosing to smoke that’s driving its headline “death rates 60% higher in deprived areas”. If a picture says a thousand words, this one is an essay on poor people making bad life choices, and causing themselves a premature death.

Moreover, the Guardian wasn’t the only one making this out – in not so many words. The article cited Cancer Research UK’s inequalities programme lead Karis Betts arguing that:

Sustainably funding support to help people stop smoking will avoid so many cancer cases in deprived areas. But we also need new and better ways to diagnose cancer at an early stage, like targeted lung screening, which is proven to help save lives in at-risk communities.

That little head nod to “funding support to help people stop smoking” again subtly suggested the same idea. That is, that it’s poor people’s smoking habits that’s at fault.

The lifestyle choice mantra is back with a vengeance again

Invariably, all were some version of putting the onus on poor communities to make better life choices. Some might have cursorily acknowledged that there’s an element of lack of healthcare, so didn’t fully foist the onus on people’s life choices – at least not so directly. But each time, it still came back to that same wearying, disgusting argument.

On Wednesday, the Canary reported that life expectancy improvements across Europe had slumped. England had the sharpest decline for the period between 2011 and 2019. However, instead of joining the dots between more than a decade of callous austerity-addled policies, it laid the blame squarely at the feet of the country’s population.

In effect, it singled out England’s populace as somehow more inept at all things diet and exercise, than every other civilian citizenry in Europe.

The bigger picture for this cancer study too could almost be a rinse and repeat of what we underscored in that one. Notably, we emphasised that:

An aggressive and deadly combination of callous policies punching down on the poorest and most marginalised communities were the recipe for this classist, ableist act of eugenics.

In short, the doctrine of neoliberal capitalism was fomenting this stall life expectancy growth. And of course, its the Whitehall political establishment that’s responsible. Yes, this means the Tories of fourteen years past. So too, it includes the Labour Party government now – and not forgetting new Labour in the early millennium either. We wrote as well that the study’s researchers should:

Try living in poverty, overworked with piss-take pay, without access to healthy food, time to exercise or cook

All this is relevant again for this research. This is because, once more, the egregiously dangerous lifestyle choices mantra is rearing it head.

There was nothing said about the Tories gutting public services either. If we’re going to take the idea of a lack of support, at a bare minimum, it needed to acknowledge that. After all, these spiralling waitlists for diagnosis and treatment are a product of fourteen years of neoliberal wreck and ruin.

What’s more, poor people have less access to healthy food that manufacturers haven’t pumped full of harmful oils, and chemical additives. That’s sure to have an impact on their health – and likely their chances of developing various cancers too.

And lest we forget, landlords lumping poor residents with toxic mold-riddled, damp properties aren’t exactly helping lungs and health either:

Curious what stats would be for lung cancer in overcrowded, mould and damp infested properties.

Or other conditions like asthma, allergies, fatigue etc https://t.co/yBehAWzZfo

— Shaban Ali (@Shabanali_1) February 21, 2025

Policies pushing poverty are killing people, as cancer study shows

When this research references ‘deprived areas’, it’s worth remembering that the government uses what’s known as the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

As the name suggests, this takes into account different forms of deprivation. It assesses 39 separate indicators across seven “domains of deprivation”. These are: income, employment, education, skills and training, health and disability, crime, barriers to housing and services, and living environment.

All these deprivations compound on people’s health. Yet, takes on the findings seem to ignore all these factors. It’s little wonder then that politicians and healthcare experts have ignored the political ideology underpinning them too.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has previously shown that mortality rates are literally higher for people in the most deprived areas. For instance, in 2020, those living in the most deprived areas were more than double as likely to die avoidable deaths than people in the least deprived areas.

After decades of politicians peddling policies that have entrenched more and more people into ever deeper poverty, this is the result. Worse life expectancies, higher cancer rates, higher mortality all round.

Ultimately, this was another rerun of the neoliberal capitalist penchant for gaslighting marginalised communities for the problems it has fomented. Plenty of people on X recognised the symptoms from the societal illness:

Poverty kills.

UK cancer death rates 60% higher for people living in deprived areas compared with those in affluent areas.

28,400 extra deaths due to deprivation.

Poor healthcare, late diagnosis, ‘must work pressure’ punishes the poor.

It is class war https://t.co/GiIriU48aG

— Prem Sikka (@premnsikka) February 21, 2025

The legacy of Conservative austerity https://t.co/8r7QY5Phc7

— Left Of London (@Left_Of_London) February 21, 2025

We’ve been in a class war for centuries, the poor class vs everyone else class, perpetuated by a bought Westminster and subservient media. https://t.co/yxZEMWSCpt

— Raylan (@petduff) February 21, 2025

The festering rot at the heart of these harrowing figures? Class war – and when all is said and done, that’s the real crux of this.

Featured image via the Canary