Elle Macpherson’s breast cancer: when the media reports on celebrity cancer, are we really getting the whole story?

Celebrity supermodel Elle Macpherson disclosed in an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly earlier this week that seven years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Media coverage around the world said Macpherson had rejected some “conventional” treatments for the type of breast cancer she had disclosed, known as HER2-positive oestrogen receptive intraductal carcinoma.

This is not the first time we’ve seen powerful celebrity stories about cancer have the potential to influence the public health narrative. Sometimes these celebrity stories have changed cancer screening and treatment.

For instance, after singer Kylie Minogue announced her breast cancer diagnosis in 2005 there was an unprecedented increase in mammography bookings.

Actor Angelina Jolie’s op-ed in The New York Times in 2013 about her preventative double mastectomy for breast cancer may have inadvertently fuelled overtesting among women not at high risk.

And when actor Ben Stiller announced in 2016 that the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test he had taken in his late 40s had saved his life, this was in contradiction to international screening guidelines. These recommend men under 55 do not use the PSA test because prostate cancer can often be overdiagnosed.