Asbestos
Victims are Cancer Victims First and Foremost, McNeil tells Parliament
“The Scottish Executive Health
Department,” MSP for
Greenock and Inverclyde, Duncan McNeil, has said, must “develop a
comprehensive strategy” to provide for
the early diagnosis and treatment of asbestos victims.
Speaking
in a Scottish Parliament debate on the matter, Mr McNeil said that it had to be
remembered that mesothelioma sufferers were cancer patients – not just
litigants, or victims of the legal system.
“We
need to get on to health interventions, so that we can prolong life and not
merely increase compensation,” he argued.
“Previous
debates in Parliament have concentrated on justice and compensation issues,”
he told the Chamber. “Although it
was necessary and right for us to tackle the injustice of the legal system in
respect of treatment of asbestos victims, and to focus on issues such as
compensation and justice, such an approach might well have sidelined the human
and health aspects of the problem.
“It
was as if compensation would dull the pain and erase the sense of bereavement
that families felt but – of course – it did not and has not.”
Mr
McNeil made it clear that the focus now must be on getting sufferers the
treatment they need, saying: “Early diagnosis prolongs lives –
compensation does not.”
Mr
McNeil also spelled out to the MSPs who had gathered to take part in the debate
– secured by Clydebank and Milngavie MSP, Des McNulty – how the legal system
failed to recognise asbestos victims as patients, or indeed human beings:
“The
legal system traumatised the people who were involved.
Not only were they presented with horrible medical evidence about how
their bodies were breaking up, but they and their families had to sit through
discussions about that evidence in courtrooms and with lawyers. We had to deal
with such a dehumanising system.
“For
example, they were said to have mesothelioma or an asbestos-related disease. Let
us call mesothelioma what it is: it is a particularly horrible cancer. It is a
cancer like any other cancer, which is why, as Des McNulty rightly points out in
his motion, it is essential that people be diagnosed early.”
ENDS
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