How to strengthen the war against cancer (1)

In his letter Priorities In The War Against Cancer (March 12), Joseph A. Muscat takes me to task over certain issues I raised in my piece A Poor National Cancer plan (March 6).

Prof. Muscat opines "... no national cancer service plan, or any coming together of government and opposition, is ever going to win the war against cancer. Such a war on cancer is more likely to be won in some advanced, sophisticated laboratory researching into fundamental human cell biology". Little does Prof. Muscat realise that first and foremost no great war was ever won without leadership and a sound plan.

On April 10, 2008, MEPs adopted a "Resolution on combating cancer in the enlarged European Union". Credit must go to all members of MEPs Against Cancer (MAC), to whom cancer patients are indebted for their efforts in bringing the Resolution about. The MAC statement, adopted by a group of 67 MEPs formed an excellent foundation and helped proper political momentum forward. Our MPs can certainly take a leaf from the EU initiative.

According to Prof. Muscat "cervical and colo-rectal screening should be put on a back-burner". Such a preposterous statement runs contrary to a recent European Commission report that Malta ranks among the worst performers of the 27 EU member states in preventing cancer. Malta has no plans to implement preventive screening programmes for cervical and colorectal cancer.

Prof. Richard Sullivan, chairman, European Cancer Research Managers Foundation states: "CRC is the second most common cause of death across all cancer types in men and women in Europe, accounting for over 200,000 deaths in 2006. It will affect more than one in 20 people in their lifetime with 400,000 new cases diagnosed every year. If diagnosed and treated early it is potentially preventable and curable - early detection and treatment could mean that 90 per cent of people survive".

Prof. Muscat categorically states that the provision of a PET scanner should be given a low priority since the money spent on its introduction would be better spent providing costly new effective pharmaceuticals such as Herceptin. It does not seem to occur to Prof. Muscat that, among its myriad of benefits in the field of oncology, cardiology and neurology, a PET-CT scanner significantly reduces multiple medical costs, replaces multiple medical testing procedures with a single test, reduces or eliminates ineffective or unnecessary surgical or medical treatments and hospitalisation, and so on.

Prof. Muscat takes great satisfaction in the knowledge that "the idea of so-called integrative medicine is not even mentioned by our public health service administrators... It is in fact a non-starter as it has no basis in scientific evidence". To such medical practitioners as Prof. Muscat, anything other than standard conventional medicine is by definition founded on dubious premises and inherently inferior.

According to The British Medical Journal's offshoot publication, BMJ Clinical Evidence (2007), most conventional treatment decisions rest not on solid evidence obtained through properly conducted clinical trials but on the individual preferences of clinicians, unsupported in the majority of cases by a concrete evidence of benefit.

Given this acknowledgement by BMJ, it is somewhat ironic to see the term "evidence-based medicine" used as a lethal weapon by those who are unashamedly opposed to integrative medicine.

As I stated in my piece, integrative medicine is a modality that is gaining respect and recognition in North America, parts of Europe and Australia - Germany has a number of clinics of integrative medicine that are recognised by the federal government.

It is more likely that the war on cancer is won by people who "think outside the box".