The End of the NHS Revolutionaries
While Rome Burns
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said gene technology would enable the health service to "leapfrog disease, so we're in front of it rather than reacting to it", in response to NHS plans to DNA test all babies to assess disease risk.
"With the power of this new technology, patients will be able to receive personalised healthcare to prevent ill-health before symptoms begin, reducing the pressure on NHS services and helping people live longer, healthier lives," said Wes.
The promise of genomics has been an obsession for several previous health secretaries. In January 2012, Andrew Lansley said, “NHS patients should be able to benefit from genomic technology, which can improve the health service’s understanding of the nature of disease and mean that treatment can be tailored to patients.” Genomics was also a favourite of “Two Hancocks”, who championed the 100,000 Genomes Project and aimed to sequence 5 million genomes within five years.
The Department for Health and Social Care said genomics would "revolutionise prevention" and provide faster diagnoses and an "early warning signal for disease". However, the rapid transformation is not quite as new as it seems: Twelve years ago, Jeremy Hunt launched a genomics body to oversee the “healthcare revolution.”
Wes’s leapfrogging of disease with parted legs doesn’t come readily to mind when he said,” The policy of his department is that the NHS is broken.”
Flooding the system with more genomics, precision medicines, and AI means patients' well-being is often at the back of the queue. Cancer care targets aren’t being met, with the percentage of patients informed of their diagnosis within four weeks of an urgent referral dropping from 78.9% in March 2025 to 76.7% in April 2025.
As Rome Burns, the Health Secretary is likely to fail, just like his predecessors, as he listens to his well-paid advisors who lack an understanding of the complexities of the issues at hand. Meanwhile, they continue to provide him with nothing but soundbites.
"The revolution in medical science means that we can transform the NHS over the coming decade, from a service which diagnoses and treats ill-health to one that predicts and prevents it," added Streeting.
Further sloganisms to distract from NHS faults: Only 69.9% of patients received their first cancer treatment within two months of an urgent referral in April 2025, well below the 85% standard. It's unclear why the target isn't 100%. Meanwhile, a national inquiry has been announced in response to ongoing maternity failings that have persisted for over a decade, and treatment wait times in Wales have increased despite the additional NHS funding.
The failure of revolutions is often attributed to a combination of factors, including unattainable ideals, internal divisions among the revolutionaries, poor leadership, and policy mistakes. In the case of the NHS, the mistakes are self-perpetuating. Preventing disease is a challenging task that comes down to the basics - advising more exercise and fewer calories won't suffice when it comes to the heady heights of genomics.
The complete lack of evidence in any of these policies is stunning. The NHS is a platform for the minister to announce policies that go down well with the mainstream media, as yet another dead cat emerges
NHS Waiting Lists
The "dead cat strategy" was associated with Lynton Crosby, Boris Johnson's political strategist. He used it as a communication tactic to divert attention away from a specific issue by introducing a shocking or controversial topic, symbolised by the "dead cat."
The Health Secretary was 'stunned' by NHS failings. He should turn his attention to his scriptwriters. The same ones must go from one secretary to the next. If only Wes knew he was following in the footsteps of Two Hancock’s "NHS tech revolution". In that case, he might see through the revolutionary drivel and aim for a middle-of-the-road plan that prioritises patient care and access. Otherwise, like all revolutions, it will end "badly" as we move on to the next revolutionary health secretary.
This post was written by two old geezers who are now onto their 19th Health Secretary.
Perhaps I'm becoming too cynical in my old age, but now that the NHS is looking after us 'from the womb (last abortion Bill) to the tomb (suicide Bill), this shiny new bauble, of genomics 'preventing illness' I get the impression that, for the sake of the Nation's Health, genomics could be used to justify enforced abortion and enforced 'suicide' ... There's a warning from history about where that sort of thinking leads.
An excellent book on history of scam of "personalized medicine" and "pharmogenomics is "Tyranny of the Gene: Personalized Medicine and Its Threat to Public Health" by James Tabery
It starts with 2003 Collaboration between NIH Francis Collins and Pfizer "SNP Consortium" Collins is architect of scam. He Should be in federal prison. In 2003, Collins initiated based on "mapping of human genome" They can now located since "gene" for every childhood disease: one-gene = one disease. total bullshit, since many genes involved. These people are ripping us off!
The United States is embarking on a medical revolution. Supporters of personalized, or precision, medicine—the tailoring of health care to our genomes—have promised to usher in a new era of miracle cures. Advocates of this gene-guided health-care practice foresee a future where skyrocketing costs can be curbed by customization and unjust disparities are vanquished by biomedical breakthroughs. Progress, however, has come slowly, and with a price too high for the average citizen.
In Tyranny of the Gene, James Tabery exposes the origin story of personalized medicine—essentially a marketing idea dreamed up by pharmaceutical executives—and traces its path from the Human Genome Project to the present, revealing how politicians, influential federal scientists, biotech companies, and drug giants all rallied behind the genetic hype. The result is a medical revolution that privileges the few at the expense of health care that benefits us all.
Now American health care, driven by the commercialization of biomedical research, is shifting focus away from the study of the social and environmental determinants of health, such as access to fresh and nutritious food, exposure to toxic chemicals, and stress caused by financial insecurity. Instead, it is increasingly investing in “miracle pills” for leukemia that would bankrupt most users, genetic studies of minoritized populations that ignore structural racism and walk dangerously close to eugenic conclusions, and oncology centers that advertise the perfect gene-drug match, igniting a patient’s hope, and often dashing it later.Tyranny of the Gene sounds a warning cry about the current trajectory of health care and charts a path to a more equitable alternative.