Does your health depend on who you are in the uk?
Noticed: 14 July 2026
Location: Victoria Line, TFL
men's health
men's health
This is one of the more progressive posters I have seen recently.
A man who is presumably of Black African or Black Caribbean heritage, sits amongst others, and from the description is having a shared conversation about prostate cancer. Their race feels to be the point of the message.
Health inequality in the UK is broader than just cancer, but it is a very compelling example. As the poster states, 1 in 4 black men will develop prostate cancer on average. Which is a staggering figure in itself, but the same estimates actually found that 1 in 8 white men will suffer in comparison. In both the UK and the US at least, black men are about twice as likely to develop this.
MacMillan are not here to explain why, but they are not hiding from a very real fact, that systemic racism has rendered the health of black people, and other ethnic minorities, as more likely to be worse.
The truth about systemic inequality feels quite generally absent from our day to day, particularly in advertising. Perhaps most advertisers want us to focus on the sunshine and roses, and perhaps charities like MacMillan have (for whatever reason) not been so inclined to stand bold with the truth.
But it is very refreshing to see someone doing it.
For an incredibly basic whistle stop tour of how science has looked into why black men suffer more with prostate cancer, strap in. But before you get too excited, the answer remains that science can’t yet completely explain why.
One of the biggest theories that it is hereditary. Researchers discovered hundreds of genetic variants that slightly increase risk of prostate cancer, which appeared more common in men from West African descent. But this did not produce a ‘prostate cancer gene’ and can’t conclusively explain such a steep risk increase from race to race.
Earlier theories considered hormones and naturally higher testosterone, which was eventually dismissed as unsupported by the evidence.
Lifestyle patterns were obviously looked at. Do black men smoke, drink, and eat more? Not only is this not proven, but these factors alone are also nowhere near enough to constitute this two-fold increase.
Medicine often knows what before why, and it is of course not my role to propose an ontological theory that respects all the scientific disciplines at play here.
But what we do know is that black men are dying from this more than white men. And I wonder if the shoe was on the other foot, what we’d be doing about it.
In a country already scoured with structural racism, I find this to be a very weird coincidence. I can’t conclusively explain why cancer is affecting black men more than white men (obviously), but it can ask how seriously we are taking this.
And state that I was taken aback to see something that cuts the BS – health does depend on who you are in this country.
