Lucky Megrahi – extended life thanks to release from NHS

Here’s something the BBC missed, although because one of its core beliefs is that Britons must love the NHS or else, it was probably omitted by design.

The Wall Street Journal Europe today has a fascinating editorial (and OpEd piece from Megrahi’s doctor) , which, if the journalists on the BBC were doing their job, would have led their news bulletins.  It has a unique angle on the death of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber who was released from prison on compassionate grounds because he was close to death, then promptly lived for three years.

In Britain, we have been concentrating on the political aspect of the affair, with some trying to slag off the Scots for getting the diagnosis wrong and others saying they were weak to let him go. The WSJ points out that the reason he lived so long was that he was spared treatment on the NHS. If he had stayed in prison and been treated for prostate cancer by standard NHS drugs, he indeed might not have lived for three months. Standard treatment for prostate cancer on the NHS is dictated by NICE, and it doesn’t come close to the success and survival rates for those being treated in Libya.

“The most compassionate aspect of his release was freeing him from the structures of the NHS,” says the Journal.

How many more examples of the true awfulness of state monopoly medicine do we need before Britons wake up to the fact that there is a better way.

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