Chris Hoy and cancer screening: is celebrity campaigning a bad way to make policy?

Media coverage has been rightly sympathetic to Chris Hoy, one of the most successful cyclists in history, who recently disclosed that he has metastatic prostate cancer. The press has also taken up Hoy’s call that more men should be tested for the disease. He told the BBC that the age at which men can obtain a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test should be reduced from 50. “It seems a no-brainer,” he said. “Why would they not reduce the age? Bring the age down and allow more men to go in and get a blood test.”1

In a commentary the Independent said that Hoy’s intervention could save thousands of lives: “Some 12 000 men die from prostate cancer each year, many after begging their doctors to be tested—after which they are told they only have months to live. The Olympic cyclist’s call for a rethink of GP screening could be a game-changer.”2

The health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, told the BBC that Hoy made a “powerful” …