A welcome end to the lifetime ban on gay blood donations

I was really pleased to hear that finally the unfair lifetime ban on gay and bisexual men from donating blood would be lifted in the UK .

 

New rules will be based on science rather than prejudice.  Instead of a lifetime ban there will need to be a 12 month gap between donating blood and a man's last sexual encounter with another man.  This is because there is a three month period after infection with HIV when it cannot necessarily be detected in the blood.  It is vital that we get more people donating blood, and the last thing we should be doing is needlessly discriminating against people whose blood is perfectly safe.

 

The rules are still much tighter on homosexual men than there are on heterosexual men, who can donate blood regardless of how many sexual partners they have had or whether or not they use condoms, but this is still a real step in the right direction.  

 

I have been campaigning for the ban to be lifted and recently wrote a question to the European Commission asking about the legality of blanket bans for homosexual men.  Their answer revealed that under EU law such bans are illegal as they are discriminatory and illogical, underlining that "sexual behaviour" is not the same thing as "sexual identity".  I hope that other EU countries with blanket bans will follow the UK 's lead to end the prejudice, and I will continue to put pressure on the Commission to act if they don't.

Anti-cancer virus brings hope and challenges

Reports have been coming out this week of successful trials of specific viruses being used to treat cancer.  The viruses have been shown to only attack cancerous tumours and to have no effect on healthy cells.  One trial, using a form of smallpox vaccine virus, showed promising results on the 23 trial patients, and another trial using the rabies virus on a childhood cancer effectively destroyed the cancerous cells.

Having worked in medical science for many years I'm really excited and encouraged to see these promising results.  But our fight against cancer will be long and hard.  There are many different types of cancer, and each has to be treated in a different way.  Many forms of cancer are rare diseases, including childhood cancers, and even cancer experts don't know much about some of them.

That is why it is important that we revise the current European clinical trials directive to make it easier for clinical trials, such as those using virus therapies, to be carried out.  Currently the costs and administration involved in trialling new drugs and treatments means that rarer cancers can often be forgotten about.  If we can reduce this burden on researchers then we could be seeing much more of these exciting results.  It's also vital that we have the same standard of clinical trials across all 27 members of the EU.  That way trials can be carried out cross-border, as sometimes there just aren't enough patients in one country for a clinical trial to be possible.  The European Parliament will be looking at adapting the rules soon, and I will be fighting hard to make sure we can treat all types of cancer as effectively as possible.

Healthy children for a healthy future

Over the last few years campaigns such as Jamie Oliver's School Dinners and television shows such as LazyTown have helped raise awareness of childhood health and obesity, but we still have a long way to go.

Recently a number of studies have proved the vital importance of good nutrition for children.  A clear link has been found between a baby's weight at birth and lifelong health, largely dependent on the nutrition and lifestyle of the mother during pregnancy.  Another study found that diet during our first few years is crucial in determining how healthy our hearts will be during adult life.  And a group of expert researchers has just called on all governments, starting with the critical childhood years, to take tough action on obesity, which is costing us huge amounts in healthcare bills and human lives.

The set of reports, published in the Lancet, found that the most cost-effective measures include putting traffic light labelling on food to allow consumers to quickly identify healthier choices for their families.  This is something I fought hard for during the negotiations on new Europe-wide food labelling rules.  Unfortunately the power and wealth of the food industry managed to convince Europe's right wing MEPs and governments to vote against my proposals.  However I did manage to stop my opponents from banning the use of voluntary traffic light systems which many British retailers already have in place, and was also successful in getting a commitment on tough new measures for transfats, which are a major cause of heart disease.

Another recommendation of the Lancet reports was a tax on junk food.  Such measures are already in place in some EU countries, with Denmark boasting the most progressive legislation.  This is definitely something we should consider in the UK.  The revenue from taxing things with high sugar or saturated fat content could be used to subsidise healthier options such as fresh fruit and vegetables, and make it easier for everyone to provide themselves and their families with decent food.

We all want our children to have the best possible start in life, and a nutritious diet and physical activity is key to that.  I will be putting pressure on the British Government and on the UN summit on health this September, as well as continuing to try and improve European legislation to make sure our policies are designed with our children's futures in mind.

Increasing research into rare forms of cancer

Cancer is a devastating disease and one that, sadly, almost everyone has had first hand experience of.  The experience of being diagnosed and treated for cancer is extremely difficult, and can be even more terrifying if you are diagnosed with a rare cancer.  Of the 280 types of cancer around 250 are rare forms of the disease, which doctors often know little about.  This makes diagnosis and treatment so much harder.  Of all the people affected by cancer, up to a third will have a rare cancer.

Because each type of these rare forms of the disease only affects a relatively small amount of people it can be difficult, if not impossible, to try out new drugs or therapies on patients in one country alone.  Therefore it is vital that we can easily conduct cross-border clinical trials for treatments of rare cancers.  There is already an EU directive in place that should mean that clinical trials meet the same standards and follow the same procedure no matter which member state they are carried out in.  However EU governments have implemented the directive in different ways which makes the system confusing and cross-border trials difficult to organise.  Also the amount of administration and the costs involved in clinical trials means that less and less are being carried out, especially on drugs that only treat rare types of cancer.

That's why the European Parliament will be revising the legislation next year.  To prepare for this I organised the Parliament's official Health Working Group, which I co-chair, to focus on rare cancers.  I invited two inspirational young men, Peter from Sheffield who is now 25, and Sam from Newark in my constituency who is just 14, to speak at the event.  Both Peter and Sam have survived rare forms of cancer, but were subject to mis-diagnosis and experimentation with drugs and therapies because too little was known about the types of tumours that they had.  The problem is especially bad for children, as trials are not often carried out specifically on children, and instead they are given adult drugs based on pure guess work.  We need to make sure that it is easier to carry out trials for new treatments of rare cancers, and childhood cancers in particular.

At the event Peter showed a moving video from the website he now works for, jimmyteens.tv, which is a forum for young cancer sufferers to share their experiences creatively.  The full version of this touching video telling the story of Alice, who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer aged 15, can be seen here: http://jimmyteens.tv/2006/11/home-sweet-home/

Greenest government ever?

This week we faced a huge disappointment in the European Parliament when MEPs rejected plans to commit to more ambitious reductions in CO2. Labour MEPs were fully behind plans to change our target from reducing emissions by 30% instead of 20% by 2020, as were, supposedly, the British government. To our dismay these plans were rejected by just nine votes.

Leading scientists agree that in order to stop a global environmental crisis we need to reduce our emissions by somewhere between 25-40% from 1990 levels. In order to do this Europe needs to be a world leader in driving down emissions, and the Tory-led coalition has pledged to be the greenest government ever. Strange then that it was the vote of 16 Conservative MEPs that stopped our plans to increase the target to 30%. Had they voted with us, and with their government, we would have won the vote.

David Cameron claims to be green, but this vote has shown the hollowness of his party's commitments on environmental policy. As global warming is a problem without borders, most of our environmental policies are made at a European level. The Tories have taken the pressure to act off the European Commission and EU countries, leaving the government's claim to be winning the argument on EU emissions in tatters. It looks like Cameron's commitment to lead the "greenest government ever" can be added to a long list of broken promises.

Crackdown on mobile surfing charges

There was good news this week that the European Commission is planning to take further action to drive down the cost of using mobile phones.

They’ve made a number of proposals to cut the cost of using mobile phones while abroad in another EU country, including introducing new price caps for using a mobile to access data, such as accessing emails or the internet.

This will be welcome whether you’re in Barcelona on business, on holiday in Helsinki or just travelling through Turin. We’re all still being charged too much for using our phones when abroad.

Already action has been taken to bring down the cost of making calls and sending texts while in another EU country, but with people increasingly using their smart phones to access the internet and online services, it’s high time we addressed this area of activity. It’s clear that many mobile operators are ripping-off off consumers with hugely inflated charges.

Of course the devil will be in the detail and we’ve yet to see the precise proposals from the Commission. These will need to be agreed by the European Parliament and EU governments before they come into force.

And we will need to watch that mobile phone operators don’t try to use these new proposals as an excuse to drive up prices for other services. After all, they have known for some time that if they did not act to end these unfairly high charges then the EU would act to protect consumers.

But it looks like an important step forward, and another clear sign of the tangible benefit of EU membership.