Access to heart surgery for smokers: Trial of thrombolysis favours smokers

He and many others might never have taken to smoking if there had not been a war.Nothing was known about a link with any disease then.Not even the medical profession knew-except the first few who suspected a link with lung cancer, and even that was not clear for a long time afterwards.All these survivors of the war are now at an age when they may need bypass surgery.They smoked through no fault of their own, and nobody had knowledge of possible consequences.They were encouraged to smoke and given easy access to cigarettes.They gave five years of their young lives to the defence of Britain.Are our surgeons, most of whom will be much younger, and who can have no personal experience of those days, now to deny these men treatment for physical conditions possibly engendered by their years of smoking?I hope not.