Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a regular column looking at spin and shenanigans, skulduggery and pseudoscience. This week we’re having a crack at Kylie Minogue’s honorary doctorate.
A UK university has awarded the Singing Budgie a doctorate in singing. Pardon? Did you say it wasn’t for singing? For music? No? Health Sciences?! Are you serious?
A doctorate is the highest academic degree in any branch of knowledge. So you’d want to be quite… knowledgeable, wouldn’t you?
Former PM Paul Keating received an honorary law doctorate recognising his economic and legislative reforms. Journalist and author Ross Gittins recently got a Doctor of Letters, letters being his tools of trade.
I can see that Kylie, who lip-synced lyrics that were apparently easier than learning your ‘a b c’s, has made a long and outstanding contribution to pop and 80s hair and anodyne acting and hotpants, and maybe deserves a Doctorate of Music, or Arts, or Popular Culture (is there such a thing?), but Health Sciences? I Call Bullshit.
Minogue suffered breast cancer, and singlehandedly did plenty to raise awareness of the disease. The number of younger women who went for check ups (when usually they wouldn’t need to worry until later in life) soared.
Put another way, many younger women with very little chance of developing breast cancer worried needlessly and potentially accessed dangerous diagnostic techniques.
Just to be clear: Breast cancer is an awful, often fatal, very common disease that has destroyed many lives – and awareness is crucial. Regular mammograms, understanding of the genetic likelihood of developing it early, being taught how to check your own breasts and feeling comfortable about seeking further advice if you notice a change, these are all very important. But there is such a thing as misplaced ‘hyper awareness’.
Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, when she was in her 30s.
Age is the biggest risk factor for breast cancer – the older you are, the more likely you are to develop it. One in nine Australian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer by age 85. The average age of first diagnosis is 60. Take a look at this graph:
Women can get breast cancer young – and it can be a particularly aggressive form. Most don’t. And all those women worrying and checking thanks to the “Kylie Effect” aren’t just harmlessly making sure they’re alright.
They’re propping up a burgeoning industry in breast cancer health clinics, many of which use unproven and inaccurate technology.
Some lives may be saved. On the other hand, some women may be wrongly given the all clear. Research has found Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging has a poor cancer detection rate – just 25 per cent.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says women are being mislead into believing new technologies such as thermography are alternatives to mammograms. They’re not. But they are often targeted at young women, for whom mammograms do not work because their breast tissue is too dense (young women who are genetically at high risk can have an MRI test done in a hospital).
Minogue is great on stage, but I’m not sure her health sciences knowledge is up to scratch, and I’m not sure her effort to raise breast cancer awareness was all for the good. ICB.
Never mind, at least the university got its name splashed all over the media.
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