Associate Professor Brian Cox, a specialist in public health at the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine is a world expert on cancer screening.
In this article, he outlines how a 20-minute procedure called flexible sigmoidoscopy can reduce the subsequent risk of bowel cancer by 43 per cent. This is the biggest available reduction in bowel cancer risk for decades, if not ever. The reduction is much greater, and cheaper, than from eating more fresh fruit and vegetables each day for 20 or more years.