Age Discrimination in Health Care

Age Discrimination in the English NHS:

The government claims to be against all forms of discrimination; even relatively tiny groupings have power, yet the government itself, in the form of the NHS, is discriminating against men over 70 and is killing them by doing so.

Prostate cancer is a serious contender for killer disease of the era, yet men over 70 years old are being denied PAS (prostate specific antigen) testing and the MRI scans that would help indicate the progression of any cancer.

The NHS keeps pressing the message that early detection means greater chance of survival. The life expectancy of western people is increasing, yet men in Britain are denied PAS testing due to their being over 70.

Regarding the costs; there is a company that is offering PSA testing kits at £16 each, so these tests must cost the NHS way below that since they buy in bulk.

Given the vast amounts the NHS spends on non-medically trained “managers,” it must be possible for them to find the money to deal with prostate cancer in the over 70 year age group. If they stopped wasting money on customer satisfaction surveys, they could fund PAS and MRI scans for every man over the age of 70.

The refusals to test and the lethal delays in treating those who do get tested can only be due to discrimination against older males.

The government statistics—projected population at mid-year by age last birthday in five year groups—show that by 2020, Britain will have a total male population of 33,173,000, and of these, 4,095,000 will be over 70 years old. If we look at projections for 2025, then out of a total male population of 33,853,000, there will be 4,412,000 men over 70. This is not a small problem. Denying proper testing and care to four million men is a BIG problem. From these figures, just over 12 percent of the male population will be over 70 years old. How many other groups that form 12 percent of their total get discriminated against? There are laws making it a crime to discriminate against minorities based on all sorts of criteria. How about the government prosecuting the NHS for discriminating against 12 percent of the total male population.

Figures for survival when treated in time show that, in 2010, the chance of surviving ten or more years after treatment was 84 percent (Cancer research web posting). The same figures show that, in 2014, there were 11,287 deaths from prostate cancer and in 2015, there were 47,151 new cases.

These figures show that it is probable that, if treated early enough—before the cancer spreads—the men will live another ten years. Denying the tests that can diagnose early enough is killing men over 70 years old.

Anecdotal evidence is that men over the age of 70 are being told the tests show nothing or just wait and see or they get put to the back of queue for surgery, seemingly on the grounds that they will die soon, anyway. This is callus and outdated thinking, and should be stopped. The life span of men in Britain is no longer three score years and ten (that is 70 for these not versed in older systems of counting). People are not just living longer, but having active lives for longer. There is much media coverage of the problems of elderly needing care homes and taking up health care services, but the truth is, there are tens of thousands of active over 70-year-old people in Britain, many filling very useful functions in society. Winston Churchill was over 70 years old when he guided Britain to victory in the second world war. Do not write off the elderly. Do not deny them the right to life. Do not condemn them to an unnecessary death from a treatable disease.