The BBC Panorama programme with this title was broadcast, on 5th October 2026. It failed to answer this question by making one very important omission.
Back in April 2026 I wrote an article on Cancer, “Why are more younger people getting this ‘old age’ disease?”. I asked why media programmes dealing with the cause of illness and diseases (not least cancer) remain seemingly blind to the fact that pharmaceutical drugs are known to cause cancer - as a ‘side effect’. After all, it is in the medical literature for everyone to see, it is in the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that come with every packet of drugs, every vial of vaccine.
Yesterday a BBC Panorama documentary asked the question, “Cancer before 50: why is it rising?” The programme can be seen on BBC i-Player. Please watch it (30 minutes) to confirm that I am correct - pharmaceutical drugs were not mentioned, not once, as a ‘possible’ cause of cancer.
Apparently the programme raised the question because NHS data showed that rates of bowel, breast and other cancers are rising among younger generations.
Remember that when the NHS was inaugurated in 1948, nearly 80 years ago, cancer was a dreaded disease; but not a common one. And remember too that it was then considered a disease of older age.
So why are ever younger people getting cancer? The Panorama programme featured several patients who were facing the much-feared diagnosis, and it proceeded to investigate some of the factors that might be driving the increase. In doing so it dealt with diet, ultra-processed food, to changing diets, to chemicals that are now found in everyday products, and mentioned obesity and much else. Panorama claimed that it would:
“… examine the latest scientific research into possible causes and asks whether regulators and government are doing enough to protect public health”.
Yet if the BBC deliberately chooses to ignore the role of pharmaceutical drugs, a known cause of cancer as a ‘side effect’, it should be asked whether they themselves are “doing enough to protect public health”?
Perhaps they, too, are failing to inform the public about an important link to the rising cancer epidemic. If I am correct, cancer was an uncommon disease before the drug-fest of the NHS was started? An it was primarily a disease of old age.
So what was the situation in 1948? There is a document on the internet, ‘Public Health in 1948: remarkable statistics’ report’ that can be seen here. It was a document published by the Ministry of Health that examined health and mortality outcomes between the inception of the NHS on 5th July 1948 and March 1949
“The mortality rates of 1948 were compared with those of 1938 (the last full year of peace before the outbreak of the Second World War and the year which had the lowest pre-war death rates of any year before the war). The report found that there had been a significant reduction in death rates. It suggested that mortality rates had fallen by 20%.
So the UK population was healthier in 1948 than it was in 1938. But unfortunately when I tried to read further I was forbidden access to the report! (Check it out)!
So I went to a report by the Nuffield Trust entitled “Death through the decades”. This looked at, and compared the causes of death in the 70 years from 1948 to 2016. It starts positively by looking at deaths from heart disease and stroke, and (as is usual) attributes this to pharmaceutical medical care:
“We can see positive developments particularly clearly in deaths from heart disease and strokes, both of which have fallen by 40% since 1948, even as the population has grown. This probably reflects advances at every level of medicine. Statins and other drugs have improved prevention, new immediate interventions to break down blood clots have been developed, and there is better care after people experience an attack”.
Of course, it could also be the result of a multitude of social, work-related and environmental changes too But then it moves on to deal with cancer deaths (alongside dementia death too).
“On the other hand, cancer claimed nearly twice as many deaths in 2016 as in 1948. Dementia is somewhat difficult to classify due to the widespread practice in 1948 of simply logging “senility” as a cause of death. But even if we add together “senility” and dementia, deaths from these causes have quadrupled”.
The report says that these are not merely increases in the proportion, but in the total number of deaths.
So whilst Nuffield claims responsibility for improvements in health for conventional medicine , the report does not explain responsibility for failures. This trend continues to this day, right up to yesterday’s Panorama programme.
The question I raise is an important one. Why is a vital question is being ignored, not just by the BBC but by all mainstream media; not just by the media but by most of the conventional medical profession; and by Government too?
Moreover, where are the public to find someone prepared to ask the question, “have pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines played a role in the rise and rise of cancer, as well as the creeping involvement of younger people in its devastating consequences?”
If the question is not asked there will never be an answer. What is more, failing to ask the question (in a programme that tasked itself to “examines the latest scientific research into possible causes and ask whether regulators and government are doing enough to protect public health”) was not an unintentional omission. It is always a deliberate and regular omission, a intentional failure to ask questions pointed questions about the role of pharmaceutical medicine in the creation of modern illness and disease.
Medical science provides us with important clues to this link in its admission that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines cause ‘side effects’. Side effects - what an innocuous phrase! Yet there appears to be a unwritten, unspoken societal decision to ignore this association between pharmaceutical drugs and serious illness and disease.
Why? Just how powerful are the drug companies? Does anyone dare challenge them? Will we ever know if the question is never asked?
So are we patients supposed just to go on taking the pills, and the shots, without being aware of what the consequences might be? Are we instead destined to believe that we should blame illness and disease entirely as the consequences of other, non-medical things?
