CANCER researchers in Britain are outraged over an eminent doctor’s claim that their efforts to find a cure are misguided because the disease offered a better death than alternatives like organ failure and dementia.
CANCER Research UK chief clinician Peter Johnson said, in a statement on Thursday, that the billions spent annually on finding a cure was money well spent because cancer killed the young as well as the old and “the more we know about cancer, the more we can give people options”.
Professor Johnson was responding to a blog post in the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) from Richard Smith, a former BMJ editor. Smith wrote that “death from cancer is the best” because “you can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion”. Smith, 62, insisted that a peaceful death from cancer was possible with “love, morphine and whisky” and urged fellow doctors to “stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death”.