Posted on 09/26/2011 7:06:18 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Patients with terminal cancer should not be given life-extending drugs, doctors said yesterday.
The treatments give false hope and are too costly for the public purse, they warned.
The group of 37 cancer experts, including British specialist Karol Sikora, claimed a 'culture of excess' had led doctors to 'overtreat, overdiagnose and overpromise'.
Campaigners dismissed the report, saying it was wrong to write off cancer victims.
'I would hardly call this type of treatment futile,' said Rose Woodward, of the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer.
The NHS spends well over £5billion annually on cancer treatments, up from £3billion in 2002.
In the journal Lancet Oncology, the expert group warned many of the costly drugs produced by manufacturers brought little value.
They said patients were offered treatment even where there was little evidence it was of use.
Instead, money should be invested in better scans and tests to determine whether a tumour is beatable, leaving 'difficult decisions' as to who gets treatment.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
A culture of death.
Oh my Lord, socialist medicine is so evil.
But that’s what it comes down to: There just isn’t enough of ‘other peoples’ money’ to go around.
BTW: What the hell is a “cancer expert”?
Another death panel.
And how will new cures be developed, then?
Well, we don’t want any of those either, too expensive.
Karol Sikora,,, what if someone made a similar decision about the value of YOUR life? Bet the tune would change.
Medicine is too complicated for them so ill talk about pizza. When pizza is sold for profit, it’s everywhere, in thousands of varieties. Deep dish, thin crust, stuffed cheese crust, wood fired, whole wheat,,gluten free, you name it. Toppings? Why we got pepperoni,, and anchovie, olive, tuna, beef, 5 kinds of sausage, chicken, peppers of every sort, onions, mushrooms, 50 types of cheese. Etc,,
You want it in a sidewalk cafe? In a mall? or delivered to your house in 30 minutes. Want wings? Cokes? How about just a single slice?
What? You want it frozen to cook at home? Fine,, we got it from Totinos at 99cents, to high end from the deli to take home.
Karol Sikora, BECAUSE THERE IS MONEY TO BE MADE,, THERES A LOT OF FREAKIN PIZZA AVAILABLE!
If pizza becomes a “right”, and has a single payer,,, Pizza IMMEDIATELY becomes nothing but a cost to be reduced at every chance. This means a frozen pizza with textured soy topping on soy cheese, once a month. Maybe,,unless you are fat. Then we will deny you a pizza for your own good. *(and coincidently saving us from paying for it)
NO NATIONAL PIZZA CARE!
It’s like that,,,
See?
I tend to agree. I worked in a hospital 20 years ago and there is no worse way to die than having cancer while being incarcerated by a hospital. I remember one patient telling me it was like being burned alive 24/7 thats how bad the pain is then all the time the patients would be begging me for death, yes, begging me to kill them. No way. Yes suicide is a mortal sin but hell cant be much worse than the stuff I witnessed. The worst of all time was one woman who tried to cut the cancer from her lungs with a pocket knife thats how bad it is.
“What the hell is a “cancer expert?”
“EXPERT” An EX is a has been,,, and a SPURT is liquid under pressure. Like spit. “EX-PERT”
Socialism is inherently totalitarian, and its adherents want nothing less than the ability to decide who lives and who dies based on their vision of a more perfect society. Control of medicine confers that ability. That is why they intend to control it.
I’ve read that that treat terminal cancer patients with heroin in some countries. We don’t do that here because we’re apparently afraid they’ll become drug addicts.
Well, it’s reassuring to remember that Obama said that there wouldn’t be any rationing of medical care under “his plan”.
I disagree. A right to die,, soon becomes a duty to do so. And the ones who want to fight to their last breath become greedy and selfish. And then “professionals” know they need to step in.
Medical people need to have a single focus of doing all they can to treat and relieve pain. They are not the people who should EVER be entrusted with refusing an available treatment that the patient can afford. Making government the bill payer, makes them the decider of what you get. This is FAR different from an insurance company i do not have to buy from. A company i can sue if they breach my contract.
I think everyone should get as much free healthcare as they need to keep them alive as long as possible.
Unfortunately, that scenario is an impossibility in our three-dimensional physical universe, since the availability of medical resources will never keep up with unlimited human need and demand.
That’s a fact, plain and simple. Medical care is an economic activity that does not exist in the world without an incredible amount of human capital and technology to create the resources used.
The best we can hope is for health care to be created and deployed as quickly, cheaply and efficiently impossible to the greatest possible number of people.
There is no aspect of government action that can bring that condition about, save letting human action operate in a free market.
There is an arguable role for government in enforcing some standards for safety and efficacy.
But the government should have no role whatsoever in the distribution and delivery of medical services. That’s an economic decision that can only be made by millions of people — healthcare professionals, financial experts and patients — making millions of individual decisions that are necessarily bound by the natural economic laws of scarcity, supply and demand.
People are eventually going to get sick and die of something. And whether we recognize it or not, there is a cost benefit analysis involved. There is a practical limit to how much can be spent to extend an individual sick patient’s life for an additional six months. Whether that limit is $50k, or $250k or $1mm, at some point, we have to admit that the patient’s life is not worth the expense.
That is cold, hard reality. To deny it is to jump off the cliff of delusion.
But personally, I would rather die because I can’t afford health care, than to die because some bureaucratic death panel decided that my life is no longer worth living anymore, which is incredibly dehumanizing and far too much power for any government entity to have.
Very nice. So nice, in fact, that libtards, democrats, socialists, marxists, union thugs, university professors, college students and even community organizers like Obama should be able to understand it.
Gracias.
LOL,, Thanks! (i like pizza)
Well lookee here!
This “cancer expert” gets a few BIG things wrong,, and can be bribed! He’s the guy who said the Lockerbie Bomber had 3 months to live! hmmmmmmm
“The Daily Telegraph revealed that Sikora was one of three different doctors hired by the Libyan government to report to them about Megrahi’s condition. Sikora’s report concluded that Megrahi had only 3 months to live due to terminal prostate cancer. Sikora has since admitted that the “3 months” timescale was suggested to him by the Libyans. According to the Daily Telegraph, this was not the first time that Sikora had been economical with the truth.”
Actually, as bad as this sounds, it might just be a blessing in disguise. I’ve always said that as long as the big bucks are made by the medical industry treating the symptoms of cancer, they would never find a cure for cancer. Cut off the money and suddenly the cure will be found, and it will probably be one that was there all the time. (yeah, I’m paranoid about the medical field).
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