Cancer treatment ‘revolution' on the horizon, says leading doctor
He expects that the development of drugs harnessing the body's immune system to fight the disease will bring "great advances in cancer survival".
In his final interview before retiring, Sir Stephen, 64, told The Times: 'We are at the cusp of a golden era in terms of the way we treat a range of cancers.
'For many cancers now, people should be confident that it's not a death sentence and that more treatments will become available.'
He said the rise in people living longer and surviving cancers would continue, alongside cures for some forms of the disease.
'Our understanding of the genetics of cancer, of the way we can target cancers with particular drugs, and how we can use the body's own immune system to target cancers itself, is being revolutionised,' he said.
He compared the progress made in treating cancer with the success in developing HIV/Aids treatments since he qualified as a doctor 40 years ago.
He also said an increased focus on prevention will help eliminate certain types of cancer.
'We can't prevent all cancers, but there are cancers that we can certainly prevent,' he said, adding that he hopes lung cancers will become 'a lot rarer'.
Cancer treatment, he said, would be 'driven by genetics' to become more individualised with the increased ability to pinpoint mutations in cells.
His comments come as experts warned of a 'postcode lottery' in cancer services that focus on improving patients' quality of life and providing urgent care for people with the disease.
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), the UK Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (UKASCC) and the Association for Palliative Medicine (APM) have called for urgent investment in supportive and acute oncology.
Sir Stephen warned the biggest challenge facing the NHS was the rise in elderly people and the economic pressure that is putting on the younger generation and the economy.
Last week, Sir Stephen warned the British Medical Association (BMA) to 'think really hard' about whether industrial action by resident doctors – formerly junior doctors – planned for later this month is justified.
He told The Times the walkout would cause 'tens of thousands of appointments and procedures' to be cancelled.
The kidney specialist has served as national medical director since January 2018 and held the role throughout the Covid pandemic.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
26 minutes ago
- BBC News
Covid inquiry: No advice to test care home patients at pandemic start
There was no scientific advice to test all patients discharged from hospitals into care homes at the start of the Covid crisis, a former Welsh health minister has Gething, who was in the post when the pandemic struck, said that "with hindsight" testing everyone "could have reduced risk".In his fifth appearance at the Covid inquiry, he faced questions about the decision to discharge patients to prepare hospitals for an expected wave of coronavirus accepted a 14-day delay in providing guidance that people could not be discharged into care homes without a negative test should not have happened. Gething was asked about the risk of people without symptoms being infectious and what was known about that before the care home policy was announced on 13 March Paisley, counsel for the inquiry, said even if it was not specifically discussed with him, "would you agree by that date that you were aware of the possibility of asymptomatic transmission and that it could not be ruled out?"The Member of the Senedd (MS) for Cardiff South and Penarth replied: "I'm not sure I could say by 13 March I was aware of the possibility of asymptomatic transmission."We discussed transmission and the clear evidence and advice was that symptomatic people were the risk."But that doesn't mean it (asymptomatic transmission) could be ruled out."Asked whether at that point "at the very least" there should have been a policy to isolate untested patients being discharged into care homes, Gething said: "That wasn't the evidence and advice that we had at the time."He added: "There was no advice that came to me saying 'you should test everyone who is leaving a hospital'."That advice was never provided to me at this point in time. And I think it's very hard to re-second guess all that and say 'at the time should you have known' when actually I didn't."Looking back though, of course in hindsight you can see that actually you could have reduced risk if you had been able to test on discharge and that would have relied not just on capacity, but on the speed of turn-around from testing as well." 'The guidance could have been provided earlier' Ministers decided on 15 April that people should not be discharged into social care unless they had tested negative for guidance on testing for the care sector was not published until 29 said: "Do you accept, along with the Welsh government, that was a delay that simply shouldn't have happened?"Gething said: "Yes, it's part of the concession that I don't attempt to walk away from."From the decision to the guidance going out it has to be accepted that the guidance could have been provided earlier."Similar decisions on testing were introduced earlier in the rest of the said the Welsh government was "on the back foot" because the UK government did not share information about testing earlier, but that did not explain the 14-day delay before the Welsh guidance was published.
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Dignity in Dying campaigner Emma Bray dies after vowing to starve herself to death 'to protect her children'
A mother battling motor neurone disease (MND) has died after vowing to starve herself to death to protect her children from witnessing a 'brutal' and 'terrible' death. Dignity in Dying campaigner Emma Bray spent her final days in a hospice this summer after voluntarily deciding to stop eating and drinking. The devoted mother-of-two, who has tragically died aged 42, previously revealed how she could no longer hug her children or wipe away their tears, but was determined to fight for a law change to help others. On Monday, Emma posted a heartbreaking final photo of her lying in a hospice bed in Devon, looking out over a row of trees. In a prepared message on her 'Stupid_mnd' Instagram account, she said: 'If you are reading this then I've finished my final spin round the sun. 'I've lived a very good life, surrounded by love, music and laughter and I want this to continue in my memory. 'Rather than shed a tear (or whilst you do) please plant a tree or call a friend, do a random act of kindness or take time to watch a sunset. 'For moments of doubt please ask 'what would Emma do?' and run with that probably inappropriate answer. Hug everyone a little tighter and love openly. 'Please surround those who were closest to me with love, time and patience. 'And to quote Frank Turner - Remember you get to dance another day but now you have to dance for one more of us. Love you, bye.' MND is a progressive illness that affects the brain and nerves, impacting the person's ability to move, eat and eventually breathe. Just days before the post, Emma revealed she had completed the 'bucket list' goal of seeing Alanis Morisette in concert with her friends. She wrote: 'After 29 years of true love I wasn't going to let a little inconvenient terminal illness let me miss this.' In May, the former charity worker who helped hundreds of domestic abuse victims and the homeless during her life, told The Mirror that she wanted to shield her 'amazing' children from the 'brutal' death she faced. 'I've had four different health professionals tell me I've got the worst disease possible,' she said. She wanted to spare them watching their mother suddenly choke to death and had planned her funeral and written her eulogy. She said they were forced to watch her crawl around the floor and deal with a constant stream of carers. 'My last bit of parenting I can do is to limit the suffering and trauma they have to witness,' she said. 'I made a promise to myself that I wanted to wait to see my daughter finish high school and my son grow up a little so I can picture the man he will become.' She also revealed her plans to stop eating and drinking when she moved to a hospice. The 'Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) practice typically takes between 10 to 14 days to die. Emma had also backed the Assisted Dying Bill, arguing it would have prevented her loved ones suffering for two years with anticipatory grief. She added: 'Imagine seeing your children crying and upset and not be able to hug them or curl up in bed and wipe their tears away.'
The Independent
29 minutes ago
- The Independent
Is it time to give up on the NHS, our national religion?
Sajid Javid makes an unlikely Martin Luther, nailing his theses to the door of a London think tank, calling for a Reformation in the national religion. He was health secretary for only 12 months in the vaccination phase of the coronavirus crisis, but it was long enough for him to think deeply about whether the NHS model was the right one. As a heretic, he knows that there will be some resistance from the faithful to the message that we can learn something from the way they do things on the continent – which is why he starts his foreword to the Policy Exchange report calling for the abolition of the NHS by claiming that this is the way to restore the health service to its founding principles. Just as Luther argued that Christianity was basically the right idea, Javid says that 'while the strength of our belief in these ideals has not wavered, our ability to deliver them is increasingly being called into question'. And, just like Luther, Javid says that he and Policy Exchange are simply proposing questions to be debated. But when Javid says the choice is between 'putting more and more money into healthcare, funded by yearly tax rises and by diverting essential investment into everything from education to defence towards the NHS' and 'reforming how we do healthcare', it is clear what his preference is. The timing of Javid's defiance is interesting. With hospital doctors losing the support of the public, Wes Streeting, Javid's successor, warned yesterday that strikes would be 'a gift to Nigel Farage'. Streeting argued that the strikes will undermine respect for doctors and weaken support for the idea of the NHS – and 'if Labour fail', he said, Farage will point to that as 'proof that the NHS has failed and must now be replaced by an insurance-style system'. This is where the argument becomes complicated. Drawing dividing lines between Labour and Reform is the Keir Starmer plan to win a second term. The prime minister wants to force Lib Dems, Greens, soft Tories and people who like the NHS to choose between him and Farage at the next election. It is not a terrible strategy: there are lots of voters who are deeply disappointed with the Labour government, but who regard Farage as the electoral equivalent of Satan. The complication is that Farage has tried to renounce his support for a French-style social insurance model of healthcare. He is aware that the NHS is popular, and that anyone proposing to abolish it will be excommunicated. So his manifesto last year promised a reformed NHS, 'still free at the point of delivery'. But Farage went on TV during the campaign to say that he wanted a healthcare system like that in France, 'as if it was a private company'. This year, he said he was 'fully, fully aware' that the French system is not completely free at the point of use: 'I'm not saying we should absolutely mimic the French system … Let's have a think about how we do things.' The best that can be said about Reform's policy is that it is not entirely clear. That is probably why it has to be left to former politicians such as Javid to make the argument for change. The Policy Exchange report makes a powerful case, pointing out that the Dutch moved to a social insurance system recently: 'In 2006, the Netherlands radically reshaped its healthcare system to involve more competition and greater consumer choice. The reform has been extremely successful and Dutch healthcare costs are proportionately lower than the UK, waiting lists lower and health outcomes generally better.' What is critically important, as Javid argues, is that the money has to come from somewhere, and a social insurance system shares the cost between the patient and the taxpayer – stating that patients should pay £20 for a GP appointment, for example. This would allow more to be spent overall, more efficiently, and it would protect the budget to some extent from short-term political pressures. We are probably a long way from such a model being acceptable to the British people, but Streeting is right to argue that doctors' strikes will take them a step closer to the unthinkable. It was Nigel Lawson, the Conservative chancellor, who said in his 1992 autobiography, subtitled Memoirs of a Tory Radical, that 'the National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion' – but the rest of that sentence was also significant: '... with those who practise in it regarding themselves as a priesthood'. Streeting may be right that, if the priests of the NHS, the doctors, forfeit the faith of their congregations, a new religion may arise. But that may not be a bad thing – even if Farage once supported it.
