Husband of Dying Cancer Patient Urges Party Leaders to ‘Do More for Cancer’

LEATHERHEAD, U.K. - April 21, 2015 - PRLog -- A husband of a patient dying of ovarian cancer has written to the leaders of the main political parties in the UK and has started a petition urging them to do more for cancer.

In his letter to the party leaders, Mr Piears voices the heartache of hundreds of thousands of people across the UK who watch their loved ones die of this dreadful disease, while also watching progress towards finding a lasting cure trickle along at a frustratingly slow pace.

An estimated 2.5 million people in the UK are now living with cancer, up by 20% in the last 5 years and with half now expected to get cancer at some point in their lives; it is not surprising that cancer is the number one fear of the UK public.  However, when it comes to cancer outcomes, the UK performs poorly, lagging behind other European countries of similar wealth.

In 2011, the current Government set out a strategy to bring the UK’s cancer performance up to the average level for Europe but Mr Piears argues that the new Government should be setting more ambitious targets.  He points out that “the Government’s strategy focuses only on incremental improvements in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, with a mediocre target of bringing the UK up to the average performance for Europe; an improvement of just 3% after 5 years.  Meanwhile cancer incidence rates are growing at a rate of 20% over the same timespan”  He goes on to say, “There will be no prospect of a breakthrough in the battle against cancer while our aim is to do no better than other countries are already doing.  And while we focus on catching up with the rest of Europe, other countries will have invested more, set more ambitious targets and forged even further ahead of the UK than they already were.  The lack of real progress in overcoming cancer after decades of research and billions of pounds of investment is frustrating – cancer patients want and deserve better and policy makers should do more to examine why progress is so slow.”

In an attempt to provide a carer’s perspective into how the situation could be improved, Mr Piears has published an article on his wife’s cancer blog (www.MidLifeCancerCrisis.com) entitled “Cancer – Where are we going wrong?”. The article suggests ten weaknesses with the current system for managing cancer in the UK that, in his view, lead to sub-optimal outcomes for cancer patients.  These are:

1.    Only ‘Big Profit’ Drugs Get Developed.
2.    ‘Aim Low’ Cancer Strategy Unlikely to Achieve Breakthrough.
3.    ‘Prevention Strategy’ not part of ‘Treatment Strategy’.
4.    Culture of Defensiveness and Superiority.
5.    Inadequate Focus on Environmental Causes of Cancer.
6.    No Central Process for Access to Clinical Trials.
7.    Excessive Burden of Proof for Harmless Treatments.
8.    Flawed Measures of Success.
9.    ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ Treatments.
10.    False Abandonment of Hope.

While highlighting these issues is unlikely to provide immediate new treatments that would benefit his wife, Mr Piears hopes that by raising them it will encourage the new Government to aim higher and accelerate progress towards finding the real breakthroughs that cancer patients want and deserve.  In his letter to Party Leaders, Mr Piears urges them to set more ambitious targets, to be bolder in tackling the barriers to progress and to give cancer a much higher priority – simply put, to do more for cancer (#domoreforcancer).

Copies of the letter and article sent to the Party Leaders and a link to the online petition urging the UK Government to "Do More for Cancer"  are available at: http://www.midlifecancercrisis.com