As the poet and sage Matthew Arnold wrote, those who only ‘half believe’ are doomed to ‘hesitate and falter life away’.
In the same tenor, Friday’s findings on prostate cancer screening have an air of equivocation about them which could lead to a tragic, terminal outcome for men who develop this ‘invisible killer’.
The UK National Screening Committee recommended those with a known genetic risk should be screened every two years. But, to huge disappointment, it rejected wider testing on the grounds it is ‘likely to cause more harm than good’.
It suggested broad screening would lead to ‘very high levels of overdiagnosis’ and to patients then being diverted into treatment and suffering needlessly from side-effects.
The Daily Mail’s End Needless Prostate Deaths campaign has tirelessly argued that, as far as this disease is concerned, knowledge is power.
Concerns raised by the committee can surely be alleviated by good medical advice. A positive screening result should be treated as a ‘warning light’ and discussed carefully with doctors, not necessarily triggering a headlong rush to treatment.
The recommendations are not yet set in stone, and the charity Prostate Cancer UK said it remains ‘as determined as ever’ to fight for a mass screening programme which ‘could save thousands of men’s lives’.
Surely Wes Streeting, a kidney cancer survivor, believes utterly – not half-heartedly – in the pivotal importance of early diagnosis? The Health Secretary must not falter like Arnold’s procrastinators, and should instead act decisively to ensure wider screening begins as soon as possible.
The UK National Screening Committee recommended those with a known genetic risk for prostate cancer should be screened every two years (file photo)
Labour’s endless lies
Even Labour’s staunchest supporters are becoming restless over the untruths peddled by Sir Keir Starmer’s Government.
In an excruciating television interview on Friday, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson attempted to argue Labour’s manifesto did not commit to broadening workplace rules on unfair dismissal.
This was not the impression the document gave to everyone else who read it, including the party’s trade union paymasters.
The transport union TSSA (‘proud to be affiliated to the Labour Party’) condemned the ‘very significant watering down’ of the new legislation.
Its general secretary said, aghast, that it was a ‘breach of Labour’s manifesto commitment – one we do not support’.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Rachel Reeves was accused of ‘deliberately misleading’ the public and the financial markets.
The Treasury’s own watchdog revealed she was told months ago there was, in fact, no shortfall in the public finances.
And instead of Reeves’s claimed ‘black hole’, she had more than £4billion in financial headroom.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves was accused of ‘deliberately misleading’ the public and the financial markets in this week’s Budget
Yet she carried on delivering grim warnings about the state of the Government’s books, laying the blame on the Conservatives for ‘years of economic mismanagement’.
Thanks to the OBR we now know this to be an utter fiction. It was concocted as a cover for new taxes in order to fund Reeves’s blockbuster benefits rises.
In turn, these hand-outs will aim to shore up Labour parliamentary seats which are coming under threat from Reform, the Greens and rabidly pro-Gaza independents.
Now the City, the trade unions and every tax-burdened worker in Britain have a clear understanding that Labour does not tell the truth.
Can there be anyone at all left in the country who still believes and trusts this degenerate Government?
