Hancock accused of "amazing ignorance" after talking about his risk of prostate cancer



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AHe said that Mr. Hanbad's other comments showed "a fairly surprising degree of ignorance about the NHS".

"He says he's going to make sure not to miss any screening appointments. This should be easy because there are no appointments for prostate cancer screening. We do not do them because they do not work, it's a waste of time and money, they cause unnecessary anxiety to patients and unnecessary work for health professionals. "

During a long tirade, the geneticist said: "His claim that this test could have saved his life is frankly ridiculous. This really demonstrates a surprising and worrying degree of innumerable and lack of understanding of health issues. "

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, President of the Royal College of GPs, urged ministers to be cautious in deploying genetic tests.

She said: "Genomic research will become increasingly important in defining the care we are able to provide to NHS patients and advances in medical research must be properly evaluated to ensure that we are able to provide the best care for our patients. they will benefit patients. But we also need to ensure that genomic data is used responsibly, ethically and in a way that does not add to the pressure on the NHS without the appropriate mitigation measures in place to deal with it.

"Many things that will be detected by genetic testing will be unimportant or of questionable value, and this could leave people unnecessarily confused and distressed. This will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the number of worried people wanting to consult their generalist to discuss their marginal results, at a time when general medicine is already struggling to cope with intense demand – and where millions of patients are already waiting too long to get an appointment, "he said.

In today's speech, Dr. Hanbad said that too much data was "locked up" in research labs because of bureaucratic hurdles and scientists' refusal to share them.

Currently, the NHS offers limited genetic testing, when patients are considered at higher risk because of a family history of illness.

The government aims to sequence 5 million genomes over the next five years to establish a health service and diagnostic, predictive, preventive and personalized care.

So far, 100,000 genomes have been sequenced, allowing one out of four participants with rare diseases to be diagnosed for the first time.

Vivienne Parry, Head of Engagement at Genomics England, said: "We are currently focusing on people with rare disease or cancer and we are just starting to think about risk rating for healthy people which will require a lot of work before being ready for use. widespread use of the NHS. "

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