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Gay Health News: A new report has suggested that gay men are more likely to have had cancer than their straight counterparts.
More research has been called for
Gay men report more cancer than straight men
9 May 2011
A study conducted in California over three years interviewed 120,000 adults.
Among other health questions, respondents were asked if they had ever had cancer, and were also quizzed on their sexual orientation.
Of the 51,000 men interviewed, 3,700 said that they had at one time been diagnosed with cancer.
Of the men surveyed, 8 percent of gay men admitted to having had cancer, compared to only 5 percent in heterosexual men.
There was no such discrepancy between lesbians, straight or bisexual women.
Liz Margolies, executive director of the National LGBT Cancer Network, called for more research into how sexual orientation affects the risk of cancer, which she described as “one of the biggest problems we have”.
She also observed that gay men are more likely to smoke and abuse alcohol than straight men, and they are also more likely to avoid seeing their doctors, in case their sexuality is disapproved of.
“I don’t think that we’re going to get people to have early screenings or see doctors except in emergencies until they can be guaranteed a safe and welcoming experience,” she said.
The authors of the report, published in the journal Cancer, also suggest that the higher number of gay men diagnosed with cancer, may be down to the higher rate or anal cancer men, or to HIV infection which has been linked to cancer.
