BY DR. DAVID WEBSTER
Double shame on you Rick Bartolucci!
Ontario is the last medical jurisdiction in
the world to accept the overwhelming benefit of PET for
patients like Sam Bruno. (Letter to the Editor, Sunday,
Dec.11)
More than 30,000 Ontario cancer patients need
a PET scan and 30 percent would have significant changes in
their management resulting in lower cost
to the health-care system by eliminating
unnecessary testing and surgery.
For colon cancer patients followed
appropriately by PET scanning, their chances of survival at
three years are improved up to 77 percent. Sudbury patients
Gabe Belanger and Glen Scarr were told they had terminal colon
cancer only to have a PET scan demonstrate they had operable
cancers which were subsequently removed.
They and their families asked to speak to
Bartolucci. He refused saying they were not from his
jurisdiction. What would he have said if they wanted to
congratulate him on his Highway 69 project?
Bartolucci has refused to meet with me. His
response to Bruno is a complete "fiction" and is insulting. He
is a coward, and worse with "full knowledge," he has abandoned
the North's cancer patients. They are in a Third World status.
In Turkey and Chile, a PET scan would have been routine for
Bruno.
What are some "facts" Bartolucci is aware
of?
- OHIP routinely covers investigational
radiotracers like PET tracers.
- The most senior PET expert in the ministry
PET trials wrote Health Minister George Smitherman in April
2004 and stated: (Smitherman, and Bartolucci refuse to comment
on the letter.)
The government is deliberately delaying PET
because of cost concerns.
Government employed physicians are denying
the data in favour of PET.
Ontario is a decade behind the rest of the
world.
- The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
has refused to answer a single question my colleagues and I
have put forward regarding these trials.
- The Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine
has declared the Ontario PET trials unethical and demanded an
international team of ethics, PET and cancer specialists be
brought in to review the trials.
- The government spent more than $600,000
sending patients to the states for this "unproven" medical test
at up to $6000 (US) plus travel expenses.
They refuse to pay an Ontario company which
offered them PET scans at a fraction of the cost. They are
paying Quebec to perform PET scans on Ontario cancer
patients.
It is time Bartolucci was held accountable
for his deliberate actions to assist Premier Dalton McGuinty's
plan to block PET from Ontario's cancer (and heart and
dementia) patients.
For those who care about cancer, Bartolucci's
e-mail is [email protected].
I am starting a petition to demand Bartolucci
attends a public meeting on his unconscionable abandonment of
our cancer patients. Send your support to [email protected]
or to Sudbury Regional Hospital. 700 Paris St., Sudbury P3E
3B5.
Dave Webster is a Sudbury medical
doctor.