Hansard

I, too, welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate, and I congratulate Jim Hume on obtaining it and on pursuing the issue.

SADS is a pretty horrendous thing for a family to go through. I will raise a slightly different issue, although Johann Lamont alluded to it: the bereavement that the families go through. Unexpected deaths in young adults are some of the harder bereavements that have to be gone through—they are difficult. Many of us will have had constituency cases in which a young adult has suddenly dropped dead. In my case, a constituent and neighbour suddenly dropped dead on a rugby field in America. Such deaths are absolutely devastating events and it takes a long time for families to recover, so they need adequate support. CRY certainly does some work to provide that.

We are told that about 12 young people die every week in the UK of an undiagnosed heart problem. Therefore, the question properly arises as to whether there should be universal screening. However, universal screening is undertaken only if certain rules are complied with and certain precepts are fulfilled. The general view is that, at present, a universal screening programme is not appropriate. That is not because of the reasons that Christine Grahame mentioned about a programme being mandatory, as the programme would always be voluntary, but because it might not fulfil all the precepts and principles. To those who are interested, I commend a recent debate on the issue in the British Medical Journal. It was one of the journal’s yes-no debates, in which one person argues for a proposal and another against.