IoS letters, emails and online postings (19 July 2015)

There is no doubt that cancer survival in the UK compares poorly with other European countries, and that this is due to delayed diagnosis (“Call to get radical with cancer tests”, 19 July). However, the problem lies with the late referral of patients to hospital by GPs, who have been incentivised not to make unnecessary referrals. Your article seems to think that the solution is to reduce the time to diagnosis (after referral) from two months to one month by offering GPs access to expensive diagnostic tests. But one month will make very little difference to cancer mortality, and radiology departments will be swamped.