Expensive Cancer Drugs and the NHS

Professor Karol Sikora, a senior cancer doctor, has said that expensive drugs should not be given to the elderly (I wonder if he includes himself at age 65 in that category). "They only prolong lives for three to six months" he stated, "we are kidding ourselves if we think they make a difference".

Is this what our NHS has come to? Maybe it should be replaced with something more caring. How many drug doses I wonder could be bought for the £80 billion cost of the useless HS2 high-speed rail line? Or the billions squandered in aid to foreign dictators and countries that do not need our money?

Those of us who have worked all our lives, 50 years or more, have paid our taxes and national insurance contributions, should feel infuriated by Sikora's remarks.

Foreign Aid or Breast Cancer Treatment?

Last year the United Kingdom government sent £280 million in foreign aid payments to India. Why? India is a country that has its own space programme and hosts a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

The pharmaceutical giant Roche offers a breast cancer treatment that costs our NHS £90,000 per treatment. A Herceptin-style drug that can offer some women with advanced breast cancer nearly six months of extra life has been turned down for use in the NHS because of its high cost.

In draft guidance now open to consultation, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) blames the manufacturers, Roche, who are asking for more than £90,000 per patient, which is far more than any comparable treatment.

Argue the pragmatics if you like. But the amount of aid that we send to India could pay for more than 3,000 treatments with this cancer drug for our own people. Is it not time to look to our own first before we send huge sums of money in overseas aid?

I reckon that is almost a rhetorical question....