In a statement that’s certain to cause heated discussions on both sides of the fence, cancer experts have said that life-extending drugs are too costly to give to terminal cancer patients.
Around 310,000 people in Britain are diagnosed with cancer every year and the NHS spends over £5 billion a year on treatment. The group of cancer experts claimed that a ‘culture of excess’ had led doctors to ‘over treat, over diagnose and over promise’. They believe that instead of the costly drugs that brought ‘little value’, the money would be better spent invested in better scans and tests. However, this would then lead to the determination of how treatable a tumour would be, leaving ‘difficult decisions’ as to who would get treated.
To justify the report, the doctors try and play the emotional tack by saying:
“We clearly would want to spare the patient the toxicity and false hope associated with such treatment, as well as the expense.”
A spokesman for the Rarer Cancers Foundation hit back at the report however:
“Describing all the treatments near the end of life as futile is tantamount to writing patients off. Just because they cannot be ‘cured’ does not mean that we cannot give them valuable treatment, care and support.”
The experts may well be talking statistics and finances. The report may make logical sense. Unfortunately, the well-being of our family and friends is not a logical emotion and to expect them to gain even a few more days with the aid of an expensive drug sounds like a reasonable option. For a country that spends billions on war and politically correct madness, cuts should be made there first to top up the NHS funding. If cost cutting in the NHS comes to giving up on people who have contracted a disease through no fault of their own, the country will rightly be in uproar. They will be wondering why the NHS were allowed to spend £12.7 billion on a computer system that didn’t work, then begrudge paying a fraction of the cost to prolong life. At the end of the day, people should have the choice; it should not be taken away from them.