Cancer innovation is saving lives – but NHS is struggling to meet rising demands
“The moment you have it yourself you hear it everywhere, but for something so prevalent it’s not talked about at all,” says Patrick Keane. His right arm is plugged into a tube that runs up to a bag of clear liquid in a treatment room at the Royal Free Hospital in north London, one of the UK’s largest cancer treatment centres.
The 56-year-old’s future is dependent on the slow drip of chemicals that attack the cancer cells in his body. If the tumour in his bowel can be reduced by chemotherapy, it can then be more easily surgically removed.
Returning to duties last week after his own diagnosis, the King chose to highlight innovations in cancer research and the thousands who like him are living under the shadow of the disease.
Patrick is one. Indeed, he got his cancer diagnosis in late January, around the same time as the King, and he is taking part in an innovative clinical trial that may help future patients.
Patrick Keane is taking part in an innovative clinical trial that may help future patients
In this election year, charities are calling on political parties to produce long-term plans for tackling the disease as part of their manifesto pledges. While innovation is saving lives, there is a looming budget shortfall.
Cancer Research UK, to whom the King became patron last week, estimates there will be a £1bn gap in research funding within the next decade. This is in part due to inflation combined with the cost of living crisis impacting donations to cancer charities.
Add to this that the number of us getting cancer is increasing, projected to go up by a fifth by 2040.
The Royal Free London NHS Trust, which receives the highest number of cancer referrals in London at 50,000 a year, has seen a 10,000 increase in referrals since 2019.
It’s no surprise then that the NHS is missing targets for waiting times between urgent GP referrals and treatment.
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One in two of us will get cancer and, as Patrick knows too well, that word opens up a world of uncertainty. “The word carries so much baggage with it,” he says, and having it can send your mind to “some pretty dark places”.
He talks frankly about the treatment and its side effects, which after his first two rounds, have been minimal. “I didn’t have much of a head of hair to begin with,” he jokes.
Some of his hair has gone in patches, but asked what the hardest thing has been, he doesn’t hesitate: “My father passed away when I was 14. He died of cancer. I have 13-year-old twins so I couldn’t initially shift the thought – is this going to happen again? Passing 48, the age that my father died was a key milestone for me. My children being older than I was when my father passed away was another one.
“Nobody expects their dad to die. It’s a very unreal concept, and I’m not dying – but to try to have that conversation you know – ‘things will be fine.’ It’s very treatable.”
Two weeks after his third round of chemo, scans show the treatment has done its job, Patrick’s surgery can go ahead and is due to happen later this month.
Roopinder Gillmore, lead cancer physician at the Royal Free
More survive cancer as technology advances
Cancer is more treatable now. More of us are surviving it because technology is advancing.
At the Royal Free that ranges from a new cutting-edge £8m PET scanner, which offers a faster more accurate diagnosis, to new drugs offering greater survival chances.
Lead cancer physician at the Royal Free, Roopinder Gillmore, told Sky News: “We are doing surgery quicker, more keyhole robotic surgery in this hospital. We do liver transplants for patients with primary liver cancer, we’re trialling that out in other cancer types which is really exciting.
“We are doing more specialised radiotherapy and for me, my thing is drug treatments, and they are exponentially increasing in terms of what we can offer our patients. The big thing is immunotherapy, we didn’t have that 15 years ago. It has completely changed the outlook for people with lung cancer and skin cancer.”
Backlogs and waiting times have increased
But for all the advances, backlogs and waiting times have built up since the pandemic. The latest NHS figures show 64% of patients received their first treatment within 62 days of an urgent GP referral. The target is 85%.
That stretch on resources has a knock-on impact on patients like 29-year-old Beaux Harris.
Beaux, an actor and dancer who teaches at The Manor Dance Studio in north London, has what is called a mutated BRCA1 gene, which means her chances of getting cancer dramatically increase in her 30s.
She has a 60% chance of getting ovarian cancer and a 90% chance of getting breast cancer.
So she has decided to get a preventative double mastectomy and a hysterectomy but, due to the backlog, she has a long wait.
Beaux Harris has a mutated gene which means her chances of getting cancer dramatically increase in her 30s
‘I feel like I’ve got a ticking time bomb on me’
She says: “I feel like I’ve got a ticking time bomb on me – and it is terrifying. The truth is it doesn’t really feel like a choice when you are presented with a figure like that – it’s like saying would you get on a plane with a 90% chance of it crashing? I know I wouldn’t.”
She has been told that waiting times on the NHS for her preventative treatment is two years at the earliest.
She says people on her online support groups have waited five years. She’s also been told there’s a high chance the operation could be cancelled at the last minute if a high-demand cancer patient needs the slot.
“I could get timed out,” she says. So, she is crowdfunding to get the £50,000 plus she needs to go private.
‘I would love to be worrying about things that every other 29-year-old is worrying about’
She might need more funds if she wants some sort of normality at the end of it.
She says: “If I have a hysterectomy now, I can’t have children. So, I’m also trying to raise money to freeze my eggs. Something that is offered on the NHS to cancer patients, but not to BRCA patients.”
She certainly doesn’t want to wait until she gets cancer. Ovarian cancer is known as the silent killer due to the difficulty in early detection.
Beaux’s grandmother, her mother, and her aunt all died of cancer because of the BRCA1 mutated gene, she hopes to be the first female in her family in generations to survive having it.
“I would love to be worrying about things that every other 29-year-old is worrying about,” she says. “I’ve got some bloody Olivia awards to win!”
Indeed, Beaux is using her talents putting on performances and doing tap dance sessions to raise money for her treatment.
In some ways it is taken for granted that, because it touches so many of us, most of the money raised for cancer research in this country comes from the British public, but charities say the government needs to play a bigger role in ensuring the UK continues to innovate and improve treatment for what remains the defining health issue of our time.
It’s like The Godfather, one reformed drug trafficker tells me.
The mythical gangster film centred on an organised crime dynasty locked in a transfer of power.
Communities in Scotland currently have a front row seat to a new war of violence, torture, and taunts as feuding drug lords and notorious families grapple for control of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
There have been more than a dozen brutal attacks over the past six weeks – ranging from fire bombings to attacks on children and gun violence.
A firebomb attack in Scotland
Victims left for dead, businesses up in flames
Gangsters have filmed themselves setting fire to buildings and homes connected to the associates and relatives of their bitter rivals.
The main aim, they boast, is to “exterminate” the opposition.
The taunting footage, accompanied by the song Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group, has been plastered over social media as part of a deliberate game of goading.
A 12-year-old boy and 72-year-old woman were left for dead when teenagers wearing balaclavas burst into a home in north Glasgow.
Garages and businesses have gone up in flames. Shots were fired at an Edinburgh house.
Signals are being sent of who wants control of Scotland’s dark criminal underworld.
A firebomb attack that saw a man throw an incendiary device through a building window
The fire attack set to the song Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group
What’s caused the gang war?
The former director of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, Graeme Pearson, explains how a “vacuum of leadership” is playing a part.
Last October, Glasgow-based cocaine kingpin Jamie Stevenson, known as The Iceman, was jailed after orchestrating a £100m cocaine shipment stashed in banana boxes from South America.
The mob leader was one of Britain’s most wanted, running his business like another on-screen criminal enterprise: The Sopranos.
The 59-year-old fugitive went on the run before eventually being hunted and apprehended by police while out jogging in the Netherlands.
Jamie Stevenson. Pic: Police Scotland
Pic: Crown Office
‘Old scores to settle’
But paranoia was running rife about how this notorious gangster could be brought down. Was there a grass? Was it one of their own?
It further fuelled divisions and forced new alliances to be forged across Scotland’s organised criminal networks.
It wasn’t until The Iceman case came to court that it was revealed an encrypted messaging platform, known as EncroChat, had been infiltrated by law enforcement.
It ultimately led to Stevenson pleading guilty.
Ex-senior drug enforcement officer Mr Pearson told Sky News: “It is a complex picture because you have got people who are in prison who still want to have influence outside and look after what was their business.
“On the outside you’ve got wannabes who are coming forward, and they think this is an opportunity for them, and you have got others have old scores to settle that they could not settle when crime bosses were around.”
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Graeme Pearson
Mr Pearson describes a toxic mix swirling to create outbursts of violence unfolding in Scotland.
He concluded: “All that mixes together – and the greed for the money that comes from drugs, and from the kudos that comes from being a ‘main man’, and you end up with competition, violence, and the kind of incidents we have seen over the past four to six weeks.”
New wave of violence ‘barbaric’
Glasgow man Mark Dempster is a former addict, dealer, and drug smuggler who is now an author and respected counsellor helping people quit drinking and drugs.
He describes the “jostle for power” as not a new concept among Glasgow’s high profile gangland families.
Mark Dempster
“There is always going to be someone new who wants to control the markets. It is like The Godfather. There is no difference between Scotland, Albania, or India,” he said.
Mr Dempster suggests a shift in tactics in Glasgow and Edinburgh in recent weeks, with 12-year-olds being viciously attacked in the middle of the night.
“It is barbaric. When young people, children, get pulled into the cross fire. It takes it to a different level.
“At least with the old mafiosa they had an unwritten rule that no children, no other family members. You would deal directly with the main people that were your opposition.”
Police Scotland is racing to get control of the situation, but declined to speak to Sky News about its ongoing operation.
It has been suggested 100 officers are working on this case, with “arrests imminent”.
But this is at the very sharp end of sophisticated criminal empires where the police are not feared, there are fierce vendettas and, clearly, power is up for grabs.
UK
Laws may need to be bolstered to crack down on exploitation of child ‘influencers’, senior MP suggests
Laws may need to be strengthened to crack down on the exploitation of child “influencers”, a senior Labour MP has warned.
Chi Onwurah, chair of the science, technology and innovation committee, said parts of the Online Safety Act – passed in October 2023 – may already be “obsolete or inadequate”.
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Experts have raised concerns that there is a lack of provision in industry laws for children who earn money through brand collaborations on social media when compared to child actors and models.
This has led to some children advertising in their underwear on social media, one expert has claimed.
Those working in more traditional entertainment fields are safeguarded by performance laws, which strictly govern the hours a minor can work, the money they earn and who they are accompanied by.
The Child Influencer Project, which has curated the world’s first industry guidelines for the group, has warned of a “large gap in UK law” which is not sufficiently filled by new online safety legislation.
Official portrait of Chi Onwurah.
Pic: UK Parlimeant
The group’s research found that child influencers could be exposed to as many as 20 different risks of harm, including to dignity, identity, family life, education, and their health and safety.
Ms Onwurah told Sky News there needs to be a “much clearer understanding of the nature of child influencers ‘work’ and the legal and regulatory framework around it”.
She said: “The safety and welfare of children are at the heart of the Online Safety Act and rightly so.
“However, as we know in a number of areas the act may already be obsolete or inadequate due to the lack of foresight and rigour of the last government.”
Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for science, innovation and technology, agreed that regulations “need to keep pace with the times”, with child influencers on social media “protected in the same way” as child actors or models.
“Liberal Democrats would welcome steps to strengthen the Online Safety Act on this front,” she added.
‘Something has to be done’
MPs warned in 2022 that the government should “urgently address the gap in UK child labour and performance regulation that is leaving child influencers without protection”.
They asked for new laws on working hours and conditions, a mandate for the protection of the child’s earnings, a right to erasure and to bring child labour arrangements under the oversight of local authorities.
However, Dr Francis Rees, the principal investigator for the Child Influencer Project, told Sky News that even after the implementation of the Online Safety Act, “there’s still a lot wanting”.
“Something has to be done to make brands more aware of their own duty of care towards kids in this arena,” she said.
Dr Rees added that achieving performances from children on social media “can involve extremely coercive and disruptive practices”.
“We simply have to do more to protect these children who have very little say or understanding of what is really happening. Most are left without a voice and without a choice.”
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The researcher pointed to one particular instance, in which children were advertising an underwear brand on social media.
She said: “The kids in the company’s own marketing material or their own media campaigns are either pulling up the band of the underwear underneath their clothing, or they’re holding the underwear up while they’re fully clothed.
“But whenever you look at any of the sponsored content produced by families with children – mum, dad, and child are in their underwear.”
Dr Rees said it is “night and day” in terms of how companies are behaving when they have responsibility for the material, versus “the lack of responsibility once they hand it over to parents with kids”.
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