I frequent surgical and medical conferences as a PM on a product for training surgeons. I also visit hospitals etc. I’m not from the medical background but I think I’ve developed a unique perspective over this time on hospitals and surgery.<p>I always find these kinds of headlines very irritating. It always follows something along the line of: healthcare system of country A is so bad but healthcare system of country B is so good. Or: new innovative treatment for xyz is offered here, but not over there. And then there is the worst kind: I had a <MildSymptom> and my <HealthcareProfessional> turned me away, what am I even paying for!<p>These are invariably by residents of first world countries. People who expect that their relatively low monthly insurance payments should give them space age medical tech. Or that when they have some extremely rare disease, that they should get multi-million dollar niché treatment immediately.<p>Thing is - more often than you would think they really do. The closer you are to a big western metropolis, the more likely it is that you will receive state of the art care from a super-specialist with space-age tech. It’s just a matter of probability.<p>But there are also situations where you won’t. The system can’t afford to throw Dr. House and his team at every patient walking in off the street. You also just might not come across someone who understands your specific case and all the latest in medical treatments. It might be that the thing that can save you is so unique that only several people in the world know enough about it to be able to help.<p>Spewing hate at the system or at practitioners is just fucking awful. They’re essentially sitting there all day making trolley-track-payoff decisions.<p>Don’t get me wrong. It’s fantastic that this guy found a way, found the funding, got the treatment for his kids and all. And it’s awesome that he’s representing others seeking help. But our healthcare systems work incredibly damn well, it’s just that there is an infinity of ways in which we get sick…
To put on my best British accent "complete rubbish".<p>The UK runs world-class trials in adoptive cell transfer and other cell based therapies for cancer. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4442586/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4442586/</a><p>I surmise it was the radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery that contributed most to a 5+ year survival and no evidence of disease. This is available worldwide. Adoptive cell transfer has a complete response rate of 10-30% in unselected patients.<p>By far the most important recent advance in metastatic colon cancer is PDL1 directed immunotherapy for microsattelite instable colon cancer. This is also readily available in the UK<p>Source: I am a cancer doctor in the US and I treat colorectal cancer