Dear Editor,

Tommy Colquhoun commented on cystic fibrosis medication [Advertiser, October 2].

My first thought was that we should not use life and death of young people for party political advantage but, then again, perhaps voting should be all about life, death and the future of our young people?

Three years ago, a new treatment for the life-terminating condition of cystic fibrosis became available.

The Scottish and English independent review boards, the Scottish Medicine Consortium and NICE, both decided it was too expensive for prescription on our NHS; it was expensive and at that time not well understood.

A campaign started and an all-party group of MSPs, chaired by Jackie Baillie and with Alex Neil as a prominent member, headed it at the Scottish Parliament as the new treatment became better understood and proved effective.

It came up for review again in September and all our hopes were dashed as it was once more rejected by SMC and NICE as being too expensive.

I can only speculate what happened next but it seems Scottish Ministers were so exasperated with SMC that they bypassed them and made an “access agreement” with the pharmaceutical company for the next few years. Not quite the full NHS prescription but as good as, although it seems some lives may have been lost in the past three years.

At the time of writing, the treatment has not been made available on the NHS in England.

I have always believed that Scotland should be leading the United Kingdom forward and I have the deepest gratitude to those MSPs of all parties who helped make this medication available. Ralph Barker, via email

Not to be mist Advertiser reader Mark Farrell, who lives in Glenboig, took this photo of a misty morning sunrise over Garnqueen Loch in his home village