Who’s behind this, and how we review

Our content is built on trusted public sources

Cancer Explained does not invent medical information. Almost everything here is a plain-language summary of trusted, publicly available sources — especially U.S. government health agencies like the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH, along with organizations such as the American Cancer Society. Much of this material is public information created for patients and the public. We summarize and link to it — we don’t copy it — and we work to keep our wording careful and accurate.

Every article lists its main source, shows when we last checked that source, and carries an honest editorial status. You can read our full editorial process and how we use AI, plus our source methodology, reviewer credits policy, and advisory-board status, which cover how we plan topics, check facts, and handle higher-risk subjects with extra care.

An honest word about review

Cancer Explained is produced by an AI-assisted editorial system, not a medical team. Pages here are not signed off by a clinician before they publish. That is not an oversight we are quietly working around: we restate published guidance and cite it, so the authority belongs to the source rather than to us, and every page names where its claims come from — you can verify us instead of trusting us. Where a volunteer clinician has reviewed a page, their name and credentials appear on it; where no name appears, no clinician has checked it. We are glad to have reviewers and are recruiting them, and we do not hold pages back waiting for one. Use this site to understand your situation and to ask better questions of the people treating you. We’d rather be honest about that than pretend otherwise. So we protect quality a different way: we keep our content closely anchored to trusted public sources, we don’t add new or risky claims of our own, and we use careful wording like “may help,” “is linked with,” and “talk with your care team.”

Higher-risk topics — such as treatments, medications, prognosis, and urgent symptoms — stick to summarizing trusted sources, always point you back to your care team, and include emergency guidance where appropriate. We never provide a diagnosis or individualized medical advice.

Who writes this

Cancer Explained is published by the National Cancer Information Foundation, an independent nonprofit. Pages are drafted by an AI-assisted editorial system against named public sources — most often the National Cancer Institute, MedlinePlus, the FDA drug label, or the trial report itself — and every page shows the source it was checked against, when it was last checked, and whether a named clinician has reviewed it.

No one here practices medicine, and we don’t present the site as clinical authority. That is the reason for the sourcing rules above, not an exception to them. If you want to reach a person, the contact page goes to a human.

Are you a clinician? We’re recruiting volunteer reviewers

Review adds a name to a page; it is not what holds a page back. We publish on the strength of the cited source, and a reviewed page says who reviewed it. With that said, we would rather more pages carried a name.

We’re recruiting volunteer reviewers — nurses, physicians (including retired), nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, genetic counselors, medical and nursing students, and trained patient advocates — to check articles in their area against the sources we cite. It takes about 1–2 hours a month, fully remote, with no minimum commitment, and your name and credentials appear on every page you review.

rate_reviewSee how volunteer reviewing works

Found something off? Tell us

If anything here is confusing, outdated, or possibly incorrect, please let us know so we can review it. We read every message and use it to make our guides better.

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