Scottish Daily Mail

Why should WE pay for gays to have unsafe sex?

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JuST imagine a young mother with terminal breast cancer being told by her doctor the drug that could prolong her life is no longer available on the NhS, due to cuts.

Think of a middle-aged father with prostate or bowel cancer being told the same life-shattering news.

More t han 8, 000 NhS cancer patients are being denied life-extending treatment after the Government’s Cancer Drug Fund warned it had to take ‘difficult decisions’ to prioritise drugs that give the ‘best value’.

As of April, no fewer than 25 cancer drugs that prolong life will be withdrawn by the fund.

Imagine how these cancer patients and their families must have felt this week when, following a major trial on a £12-a-day drug which helps prevent people catching hIV, they learned researcher­s were recommendi­ng that healthy gay men should be given it free on the NhS at a cost of almost £5,000 a year per person.

All so that the lucky recipients can have unprotecte­d sex with less chance of catching hIV.

The National Aids Trust says the cost of the revolution­ary new drug PreP can be justified because of the long-term costs of treating hIV.

They insist the NhS has an ‘ethical duty’ to protect men f rom the disease as there are 2,500 new cases of hIV i n gay men in t he uK each year, despite the millions of pounds of public money spent raising awareness of unsafe sex since the eighties.

What kind of ethics is it to save one group of society f rom a disease that can be prevented by using a £1 co n d o m, while denying sufferers a longer life?

In a country where the elderly die neglected in hospital corridors, where life-extending drugs are denied people with leukaemia and lymphoma, and life-enhancing Alzheimer’s drugs are restricted, I would suggest it can’t make sense to provide expensive drugs for a minority of healthy people who make a lifestyle choice not to protect themselves from sexually transmitte­d diseases.

ONe of my close gay friends recently went to a presentati­on at the Terrance higgins Trust. Of the 300-plus welleducat­ed, mostly middle- class men present in their 20s and 30s, only a tenth admitted in a question and answer session that they practised safe sex.

Wouldn’t a drug like PreP only encourage this kind of reckless behaviour?

And what about our great gay icons such as Sir Ian McKellen and the newly appointed Labour peer Michael Cashman speaking out about the dangers of unsafe sex and, in the process, saving the NhS millions. Or Stephen Fry spreading the message t hough his f our million Twitter followers. If you don’t want to get hIV, use condoms. After all, they’re already free on the NhS.

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