Lung cancer sufferer I want medical data to be used for positive reasons

Michele Mcmahon, 49, a lung cancer sufferer, said she was horrified that medical data from thousands of patients like herself had been handed to allies of Philip Morris.

The former NHS nurse said: “I really believe in the importance of research. I want medical data to be used for positive reasons – to help people, to help to find better treatments, and also to find ways to make smoking less attractive to young people.

“If I had been asked, I would never have given permission for my data to be used by the tobacco industry,” said Mrs Mcmahon, from Liverpool,

pictured with granddaughter

Alexa. “I don’t understand how Public Health England could have allowed this,” said the mother-of-two, who was diagnosed 15 years after giving up smoking.

“This is about our lives; these tobacco firms are all about making a profit.” Mrs Mcmahon, who was a ward sister at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, said she feared how the data could be used. “It is just inexplicable – we know the kinds of things the tobacco industry has said and done over the years. They spent long enough trying to argue that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. Why would PHE hand over data from our medical records to firms like that? It horrifies me. Not just because of what they want to do with it, but also that it undermines all the really important work that is going on in research,” she said “I’ve worked in the NHS, I know how important data protection is,” she continued. “It is really important to have public confidence in the way they look after medical data. This will do enormous damage.”