3:07 PM
Gary Schwitzer puts into perspective the issue surrounding the desire of Ashya King's family for the child to have proton beam therapy. Excerpts:
In all of this, there is a golden opportunity to improve the public dialogue about new medical technology. Issues such as: how many such devices does one city, one region, one country, the world need?
Why does the US (with more than a dozen operating and more than a dozen in the works) have so many proton beam facilities? Much of the proliferation – not all of it – is for reasons other than treating kids with difficult-to-treat brain cancer, where the evidence is strongest but where the number of cases is relatively small. It’s to treat the prostate cancer cash cow, for a condition where the evidence is questionable.
That’s a part of the technology assessment, technology proliferation story that isn’t often told.
So while the Ashya King story has many ugly angles, let’s not turn it into a story of the big, bad British health care system that doesn’t have any proton beam facilities up and operating for kids like this yet. That angle – about allocation of limited resources – is a lot more complex.
In all of this, there is a golden opportunity to improve the public dialogue about new medical technology. Issues such as: how many such devices does one city, one region, one country, the world need?
Why does the US (with more than a dozen operating and more than a dozen in the works) have so many proton beam facilities? Much of the proliferation – not all of it – is for reasons other than treating kids with difficult-to-treat brain cancer, where the evidence is strongest but where the number of cases is relatively small. It’s to treat the prostate cancer cash cow, for a condition where the evidence is questionable.
That’s a part of the technology assessment, technology proliferation story that isn’t often told.
So while the Ashya King story has many ugly angles, let’s not turn it into a story of the big, bad British health care system that doesn’t have any proton beam facilities up and operating for kids like this yet. That angle – about allocation of limited resources – is a lot more complex.
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