Richard Sullivan: No person or institution is immune from the decay of time

Richard Sullivan shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Look upon my work’s Ye Mighty, and despair! Percy Shelley’s magnificent verse on the ruins of Ozymandias King of Kings’ reflects a reality that no person or institution is immune from the decay of time. On the face of it, the UK’s National Health Service and its cancer services still deliver remarkable care to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

It is an extraordinary societal privilege, all too easily taken for granted. But the NHS, and cancer in particular have been systematically eroded. We have seen market policies – shopping around – erode equality.

Our public research has become dominated by a biopharmaceutical agenda, a mentality that technology will solve all our systemic problems, and we have thrown away critical strategic bodies – the National Cancer Research Institute. The ten pressure points that need to be addressed are clear, and so too the solutions. What is needed is a new National Cancer Control Plan, not some watered-down major condition strategy. The UK gets many things right in cancer control (from National Cancer Audits to some outstanding outcomes in specific areas) but our failings are not just our own but a lesson to others.”

Source: Richard Sullivan/LinkedIn

Richard Sullivan is a Professor of Cancer and Global Health at King’s College London, where he directs the King’s Institute of Cancer Policy and co-directs the Conflict and Health Research Group. His research spans from global cancer studies to conflict and health, with a focus on capacity building in conflict zones, humanitarian medicine, women’s health, and digital innovation in surgery.