An item from The Times last September (found while doing the Sunday afternoon tidying up) announced that General Electric has joined with venture capitalists to form a $100m fund to finance the development of early detection, diagnosis & treatments for breast cancer.
Well what’s not good about that?
The worry is that the prospect of profits focuses on treatment of a disease which is becoming ever more prevalent, it seems – a news item the other week quoted a lifetime risk for women in this country which has now risen to 1 in 8 – the risk of getting cancer just by being a woman now the same as that of getting lung cancer for a smoker?
Shouldn’t we be putting more into finding out why – how much of this is down to methods of detection which find ‘cancers’ which do not need treatment?
Unit costs of cancer speciality drugs are rising by about 13% a year – that’s worth a $100m investment!
