CANCER patients have hit back at comments made by a senior health official who compared getting life-saving drugs to buying an expensive car.
Professor David Barnett, chairman of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Exellence’s (Nice) appraisal committee – the body which approves medicine used in the health service – said people who demand expensive drugs on the NHS were “blinkered”.
He made his comments in a documentary about the organisation which will be broadcast on BBC2 on Wednesday. Called The Price of Life, the programme follows a group of patients waiting to hear whether Nice will approve a cancer drug costing £36,000 a year.
He said: “The patients’ views of this are understandable because it is their personal problem. But it’s blinkered.”
Prof Barnett said an effective health care system had to be run within a budget, and patients demanding expensive drugs would not look at their own resources in the same way.
"They look at how much money they are getting from their own occupation and they say ‘I can't afford a Bentley I can only afford a bike’,”
he said.
“If it was me, if it was my family I would feel the same way, but Nice and the appraisals programme has to stand outside that and look at everybody, not just the individual.”
His remarks have angered and upset people fighting cancer who have battled to secure costly treatment.
Nick Carter, 60, a solicitor from Arncliffe, near Skipton, North Yorkshire, persuaded his primary care trust to fund Cetuximab, a drug not normally recommended for use in the NHS, after a long struggle.
He said: “It’s offensive to compare a choice between a longer life and imminent death with a choice between a Bentley and a bike.
“And it’s equally offensive to accuse patients who have paid their taxes to fund public expenditure, such as the Iraq War or MPs’ expenses, of being blinkered when they look for something back from welfare state, which they also fund.”
Mr Carter who suffers from bowel cancer, added: “Difficult decisions do have to be taken, but Nice has been created with its own set of blinkers – the budget.”
Mary Brewis, 53, from North Tyneside, who has been battling advanced bowel cancer for six years, has been paying £1,100 a week to receive the drug Erbitux privately since the end of March because it is not available on the NHS.
“I dont believe cancer sufferers are blinkered,” she said. “We understand that there is not a limitless budget, however if NHS resources were better managed and the Government negotiated more competitive prices with the drug manufacturers then many more cancer patients would have access to life-prolonging treatments.”
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