denial of life-saving drugs

Anti-smoking health authorities the world over have indelibly linked lung cancer with smoking -- ignoring all other causes -- and now Cerise has read a recent report showing that the spiraling death rates from lung cancer are not due to increased smoking but to deliberate health policy measures denying lung cancer patients expensive lifesaving drugs (Tarceva and Alimta).

"This new report by Professor Bengt Jonsson, of the Centre for Health Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics, and Dr Nils Wilking, clinical oncologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden -- google their names if you want more details -- puts the blame fairly and squarely where we all know it belongs," says Cerise, "and I hope the fat cat bureaucrats responsible for denying lifesaving drugs to lung cancer patients -- and causing their premature death -- are suitably punished."

"In relation to treatment and survival, the Swedish report showed that the UK, New Zealand, Poland, the Czech Republic and South Africa have the worst records for denial of lifesaving drugs for lung cancer and the lowest five-year survival rates," says Cerise. "Apparently the USA, Austria, France and Switzerland are the best places to be if you have lung disease -- they routinely use the new cancer drugs in treatment and, because they do, they have the highest five-year survival rates."

"Interestingly, the Swedish report came out about the same time as another report linking throat cancer to HPV (a virus causing genital warts) and advising against oral sex," laughs Cerise. "This interests me because throat cancer was also supposed to be another disease caused by cigarette smoking."

"Also, I always thought that asbestos lung disease was different to lung cancer but apparently not," says Cerise. "If it is being included in lung cancer incidences and mortalities then no wonder the rates are spiraling."

"Asbestos cement sheeting was the main building material until recent decades and everybody breathed in its deadly fibers whether they were working with it or not," explains Cerise. "Like the heath hazards from smoking, asbestos disease takes years to manifest itself and some of us are susceptible to it, and some of us aren't."

"Basically, to withhold lifesaving drugs on the grounds of cost or moral judgments is abominable," says Cerise. "The health policy advisors may believe that it is hardly worth giving expensive drugs like Tarceva and Alimta to lung cancer patients because they caused their disease by smoking and should sue the tobacco or asbestos industry to get the money they need for treatment -- but what if it was caused by something else?"

Read more by Cerise on this subject:

everything is killing us!

health bureaucrats play God