Cancer care advances 'could help Lockerbie bomber live years longer'

Terminal cancer: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on his return to Libya last year
12 April 2012

Advances in treatment for prostate cancer mean the Lockerbie bomber could live for years, a specialist in the disease has said.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was freed from a Scottish prison to return to Libya almost a year ago on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The decision has been defended by the Scottish Government who said a report compiled by Scottish Prison Service director of health and care Andrew Fraser concluded that a three-month prognosis was a reasonable estimate.

Professor Roger Kirby, a consultant urologist at St George's Hospital in London, told Channel 4 news last night that new treatments for prostate cancer mean patients can live for much longer than in the past.

He told the programme that chemotherapy has been known to extend the lives of patients by up to three years.

The professor said: "There are new therapies coming in all the time. There's chemotherapy which al-Megrahi is on in Libya, there are other new things... these are improving survival rates on these patients really quite dramatically, so it was a big mistake to let him out on the premise that he would be dead within three months.

"We know that patients can survive 18, 24, 36 months longer as a result of these treatments.

"It may be that newer treatments coming in now will extend that life expectancy even longer, so the longer Mr al-Megrahi lives, the more embarrassing it is that he has been released from jail.

"He should have received that chemotherapy in jail, not back in Libya, I think."

Megrahi was convicted of the murder of 270 people in the 1988 bombing of PanAm flight 103. He was jailed in 2001 and released on August 20 last year after his diagnosis of terminal cancer.

A Scottish Government spokesman said last week: "Dr Fraser drew on expert advice from a number of cancer specialists in coming to his clinical assessment that a three-month prognosis was a reasonable estimate for al-Megrahi - it was not based on the opinion of any one doctor.

"These specialists included two consultant oncologists, two consultant urologists and a number of other specialists, including a palliative care team, and Mr al-Megrahi's primary care physician."

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