New Zealanders Wake Up To Reality: There Is No Cure For Cancer

In recent months two articles in the New York Times underscore the state of chaos in cancer treatment in America. Now New Zealand health officials concede their "cancer battle plan" is "uncoordinated and ad hoc." An article in the August 24, 2007 Dominion Post asks: "What is the point of detecting cancer if we don't have equipment and medicines to treat it?" Despite a government action plan, "very little has, in reality, been achieved," said a documentary report.

The report cited patient frustration with a "a truncated, unproven course of Herceptin while the patient must desperately raise funds to personally fund the extended course." Herceptin is an expensive anti-cancer drug that extends the life of breast cancer patient by a few months at best. Its widespread use would bankrupt most health plans.

A Cancer Society official said it was "intolerable" that nine years after the need was identified, cancer patients in the Wellington region were still waiting for a third radiation machine. The $5 million linear accelerator, which fires a gamma radiation beam to destroy tumors, cannot be installed till the ministry decides who will pay an estimated shortfall of $500,000 in treatment funding. While linear accelerators treat cancer, there is little evidence even one cancer has been cured by such treatment. The New Zealand Cancer Society is demanding more treatment, even if it is ineffective.