Cancer's killing fields

Kamran Abbasi looks at how Channel 4's Cancer Wars (8 pm on January 18 and 25 and February 1 and 8) explores the political dimensions of cancer

Nazi scientists working sinisterly in dark laboratories; a whole town suffering the harsh discipline of the Third Reich; the triumphant Allies showering gifts on liberated townsfolk. It might sound like the storyline from a second world war yarn, but in fact these are images from Channel 4's Cancer Wars. Billed as a “major four part series telling the story of cancer through the eyes of those who have suffered, those who have tried to combat it and those who have stood in the way,” Cancer Wars begins with Hitler's Germany.

While the Jews were being terrorised, it seems Hitler was on a mission to improve the health of the Aryan race. German scientists investigated smoking and cancer and found a link. In the German town of Jena …