Who could object to the NHS screening smokers for lung cancer – aren’t their lives as important as everyone else’s?
Prof Charles Swanton, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, argues that 5,000 lives could be saved each year by introducing screening for lung cancer. The people screened would be classed as at risk, either from their own smoking or a family history of lung cancer. Swanton and other experts spoke before the publication of two reports (calling for more funds for cancer research and treatment) from the thinktank Demos and the University College London School of Pharmacy. Regarding lung cancer screening, Swanton described the data as “extraordinary. If we had a drug half as good as that, we would have adopted it by now.”
That all sounds promising, especially for those of us who might once have considered putting “good at smoking” in the “special skills” section of our CVs. Survival from lung cancer is about 15% in the UK (one of the lowest rates in Europe), but the disease can be curable when caught early. Screening on the grounds of family history is one thing. But what about smokers/former smokers (yes, I do mean idiots like me) who, some may perceive, “brought it on themselves”?
This isn’t an idle query. British people can be brutally judgmental about who deserves what medical initiative. You see it in the objections to liver transplants for alcoholics or to obese people being offered gastric band surgery. In such cases, there is the distinct feeling that some believe NHS resources would be better directed elsewhere, which is both understandable... and completely monstrous. Should only those leading perfect lives receive help, while anyone who makes a mistake, even just taking up a bad habit in youth, must be punished and left to rot?
This censorious, begrudging attitude reveals the worst of us. Of course people should be proactive about their health, reducing risk factors by not smoking, drinking less alcohol, eating well and exercising regularly, not least to help the beleaguered cash-strapped NHS. Nor should anyone start viewing lung cancer screenings as a safety net or as an excuse to continue smoking. However, who truly has a perfect record regarding their lifestyle choices and who would even want such a record, to go along with what amounts to a medicalised cult of perfection?
It’s also important because it feeds into a wider societal concept of who deserves help. Entering the second decade of Tory government, there has already been a concerted (arguably highly successful) effort to establish the idea of the deserving and undeserving poor. Now, with the NHS under threat as never before, the last thing British people need is the idea of the deserving and underserving sick. Who “deserves” exciting new NHS treatments and initiatives, such as potentially life-saving lung cancer screenings? The only possible ethical answer is – everybody does.
Dominic Cummings should give his wardrobe the bum’s rush
I don’t ask for much in life, but could I please never see Dominic Cummings’ naked arse cheeks again? As Cummings entered No 10 last week, his baggy, crumpled trousers fell down his legs, like some failed suburban grime artist.
In his recent job advert for “weirdos and misfits”, he said: “I’ll bin you within weeks if you don’t fit”, but sadly didn’t apply the same strict criteria to his trousers. A fraction more slippage, and the entire nation would’ve been triggered. Have we gone from Builder’s Crack to Aide’s Arse now? In truth, this was just another example of how Cummings’s carefully formulated anti-styling betrays a poignant inner neediness.
He dresses like he’s just been rejected as a backing dancer for a Skepta video and has lain face down and weeping in a skip behind Subway to get over it. Wilting hoodies, internet nerd T-shirts, limp gilets, crumpled shirts, rotting jumpers… is there nothing this 48-year-old won’t drag out of an Oxfam bin to wear to government meetings? The message is clear: Cummings is too clever, maverick and important to care about his appearance.
Give over, nobody looks that bad by accident. Just like Boris Johnson ensuring his hair is perma-ruffled, Cummings puts effort into making himself look artfully dishevelled. Why does he alone get away with being a scruffy Herbert? He should either let all the Tories dress like stoned students or present himself properly. It verges on tragic how desperate Cummings is to signal his “outsider genius”.
With true outsider geniuses, the aim is invisibility, anonymity, blending in. However, Cummings’s fatal flaw is that he’s an attention junkie. A real maverick would render himself carefully unmemorable in a nondescript suit. Cummings tries too hard.
DiCaprio’s taste in 22-year-olds is more absurd with every year
Does Leonardo DiCaprio, 45, know how old he is? The actor looked stunned to be called out by host Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes about his weirdly young girlfriends and the fact that he’s getting on for 50.
Oddly, it’s all too possible that DiCaprio has managed to ignore his age. He could be one of those people who believes that fame and great wealth insulate them from harsh realities, such as getting older like everybody else. He could be surrounded by people who insist that he’s still a hot young buck: “No, Leo, it’s not remotely bizarre or even deeply gross that you’re still dating models in their early-20s.”
DiCaprio has now got himself a reputation, not just for dating much younger women, but dumping them before they turn 25. Ageing, embittered feminists such as myself are on to him and I, for one, would like to commiserate in advance with DiCaprio’s current model girlfriend, Camila Morrone, 22, whose heart will be broken probably no later than two-and-a-half years from now.
Meanwhile, DiCaprio’s true friends should be taking him aside for The Talk. As in: “Come on, dude, you gotta know how old you are. Embrace it, don’t be scared of it. Don’t ever again be that guy looking shocked and stupid at award ceremonies.”
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
