fighting spirit - the stories of the women in the Bristol breast cancer survey


fighting spirit - the stories of the women in the Bristol breast cancer survey

edited by Heather Goodare
Scarlet Press
ISBN 1 85727 033 9
£8.99 (+ £1.50 p&p if ordered direct from Scarlet Press, 5 Montague Road, London E8 2HN)

Sheila Hancock writes in her Foreword to fighting spirit:

They say that everyone remembers where they were when they heard Kennedy had died. I am ashamed to say that I don't. But I do remember where I was when I heard I had doubled my chances of dying of my breast cancer by going to the Bristol Cancer Help Centre.
Like Sheila Hancock, I remember hearing the purported "results" of the Bristol survey with disbelief. The subsequent criticism of this flawed study received significantly less press attention than the initial inflammatory and damaging coverage. Fighting spirit is not an expose. This book gives only a brief historical account of the now discredited Bristol study, concentrating instead on the personal stories of eleven of the women who took part in the survey.

The royalties from fighting spirit are being donated to the Bristol Cancer Help Centre. If every medical practitioner and student concerned with cancer in Britain were to purchase a copy, this would go some way towards compensating for the damage which was unjustly dealt to the Centre by their profession. The unique and varied stories of the contributors to fighting spirit might also increase their understanding of women who have breast cancer and their wish for holistic treatment.

(Review by Marie Nally.)

From the back cover of fighting spirit - the stories of the women in the Bristol breast cancer survey:

In September 1990 a scandal erupted in the UK medical establishment when the interim and (erroneous) results of a breast cancer study funded by two major cancer charities were prematurely published in the Lancet. The report not only caused the public to lose confidence in the Bristol Cancer Help Centre but also greatly distressed the women who had agreed to take part in the research. Angered by the way in which their data had been used, the women fought back. They refused to accept the research results and in an unprecedented example of patient power challenged not only the scientists who had carried out the study but the cancer charities who had sponsored it. Their campaign resulted in new guidelines being drawn up by the Charity Commission for the funding of medical research.

For the first time eleven women who took part in the survey speak about the impact the publication had on their lives and what the Bristol Centre meant to them in their individual cancer journeys.

Carolyn Faulder, Chairwoman of Breast Cancer Care, says of fighting spirit:
This is the book that had to be written and must be read. A powerful combination of eleven women's personal stories of their response to breast cancer and a compelling account of their united challenge to the medical establishment. The writing is insightful, compassionate, occasionally humourous, never bitter, constantly inspirational.




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