One in two British men set to be diagnosed with cancer, experts claim

Men in the UK currently have a 44 per cent chance of developing the disease.

Women’s risk is also expected to increase from 40 per cent to 44 per cent in the next 15 years.

The better news is that proportionally fewer people are likely to be dying of cancer thanks to improved methods of diagnosis and treatment. Over the last 40 years, cancer survival has doubled, figures show.

The projections, from Cancer Research UK, are based on past incidence and death rates and assume a continuation of trends.

They do not take into account new forms of treatment, lifestyle and environmental changes that might alter future cancer rates.

Age is the biggest risk factor for cancer and the increase in incident rates largely reflect the fact that people are living longer, said the charity.

The cancers set to affect people most in the next 15 years are prostate, bowel and melanoma (skin).

Cancer Research UK’s chief executive Dr Harpal Kumar said: “It’s only through research that we will be able to beat cancer. We need to do more work to understand what drives cancer and how we can prevent it, as well as developing new treatments to reduce the number of people who will die from it.”