Very few of us are lucky enough to claim that we have not been personally affected by cancer or knowing someone close to us who has had it. New statistics suggest that as much as 40% of UK inhabitants will get some form of cancer within their life time making it by far the biggest killer that exists in the modern day world.

Yet incredibly, if you were to ask your average man or woman on the street if they new exactly how to test themselves for either testicular or breast cancer, the majority of them would fumble around, looking embarrassed and not really have a clue.

It is almost undoubtedly a symptom of British “prudishness”, for which we are infamous across the world, that makes talking about one’s breasts and testicles a taboo subject. Unfortunately, however, this causes the death of hundreds of thousands of people because the average person doesn’t know how to check or even how frequently one should check for obvious warning signs of the killer disease.

It is lucky then, despite being very late to come about, that companies such as Cancer Research UK have begun to tackle this problem. In a new advert they show a series of British people talking about their breast/testicles and although the advert is light hearted with people joking about size, it does show how naive and frightened people can be to talk openly about such a thing.

If we are to have any hope of combating cancer, the British needs to change their perspective on the “taboo” and become comfortable with talking about our private parts. We need to be educated, as a country, on what to look for and how to test ourselves. Lives really can be saved, probably even more than would be saved if we reduced crime to zero percent. Surely that makes it a top priority cause worth fighting for?