Gordon Brown makes unhelpful comment on cancer
Posted by gimpy on September 30, 2009
All the political blogs are busy interpreting the nuance and debating the policy implications of Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour conference. I’ll leave them to do that. I have a major issue with this particular part of his speech though:
And because we know that our investment in breast cancer screening works and early intervention saves lives, I am proud to announce that we will go much further.
We will finance a new right for cancer patients to have diagnostic tests carried out, completed and with results – often same day results – within one week of seeing your GP. That is our early diagnosis guarantee, building on our current guarantee of only two weeks wait to see a specialist.
And so with three major steps forward – early diagnosis, early treatment and our historic investment in research for cancer cures, we in Britain can transform cancer care; and our ambition is no less than to beat cancer in this generation
My bold.
Sadly it is a myth that there is a cure for cancer and that cancer can be beaten in a generation. The best succinct explanation I have seen of this is from PHD comics (below). I’m all for politicians making arguments for more research and healthcare, I’m less keen on them distorting public perception of the results of that research and healthcare. It bothers me somewhat that this speech without doubt underwent a substantial number of revisions and likely had contributions from many individuals and not a single one of them noticed that this claim about cancer was remarkable.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1162 (copyright Jorge Cham)
Neuroskeptic said
Quite right. Sadly. It’s also bizarre to claim that Britain is going to cure cancer because we’re a small country and the major advances are going to come out of the U.S., just like most of the major advances in most fields of science. If we’re perfectly honest.
warhelmet said
Didn’t Nixon say something similar?
Robert Harris said
There is a world of difference between having diagnostic tests carried out and diagnosis!
notspock said
“not a single one of them noticed that this claim about cancer was remarkable”.
Its perhaps for that reason they shoved it in! A bit beyond hubris really. Unless he’s playing with the word “ambition”, like wanting to be a first division footballer when you were a kid (yes, not the premier).
I do like the bit about “THE/A cure” and the fact that there will be millions of varieties of Cancer – It did occur to me when I came across “medicine man” with Sean Connery.
However, two criticisms:
I might describe cancer as “something in your body failing” – but that thing being a single cell that went funny.
I don’t usually care about describing bacteria or viruses as if they are sentient beings-”having figured out” how to survive etc., but somehow I don’t like that description for when its your own cell thats gone wrong (strange emotional response!)
abetternhs said
‘Breast screening works’ really shouldn’t go unchallenged
If 2000 women regularly attend breast screening for ten years…
• 1 life will be saved by detecting the cancer early.
• 10 women out of this group will be wrongly diagnosed with cancer. They will have surgery to remove part of or their whole breast, and may also receive radiotherapy or chemotherapy when they do not, in fact, have cancer at all.
• 200 of these women (one in ten) will experience a ‘false alarm’ where the mammography shows something that might be cancer, but that additional investigation proves is normal.
The psychological strain of waiting to find out whether or not there is a cancer can be severe. The investigations can continue for many months and leave a woman uncertain and vulnerable about her health and disease in the long term.
http://www.screening.dk/folder_uk.pdf
Laurence Marshall said
Sorry to resort to semantics, but he did say that he had the ‘ambition’ to cure cancer in this generation, not that he actually will. This is common in politics. Another example is the ambition to achieve full employment, which will of course never happen.
notspock said
I did actually re-read the speech. He sums up at the end with a rather stronger sentence, without the word ambition. Which is far more remarkable.
“… tames the old excesses. We can meet and master the challenge of an ageing society with a National Care Service, we can in this generation be the first to beat cancer.
We can transform our politics.”