British government puts costs before lives

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) says the cost of the treatment is too high for the extra benefit it gives patients.

Avastin (bevacizumab) can help patients with advanced bowel cancer which has spread to other organs, usually the liver or lungs.

It costs around £21,000 per patient, and an estimated 6,500 people a year could use the drug.

NICE said it had even considered a risk-sharing scheme with the manufacturer Roche in order to get the drug to patients, but it still did not work. Patients will now have to rely on the government's £50m cancer fund, or pay themselves, if they want the drug.

Patients and campaigners have criticised the decision.

Barbara Moss, 55, was given just three months to live in November 2006 when doctors discovered her bowel cancer had spread to her liver.

Mrs Moss, a former teacher from Worcester, said: "To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. I am still here - alive.

"I am living proof that Avastin works.

"NICE has put a value on life. It seems immoral to me that, as a result of negative NICE decisions like this one, people's choice of living or dying depends on whether they can afford a drug because it isn't available to them on the NHS."

The NICE guidance is subject to consultation and appeal.

Chief executive Sir Andrew Dillon said: "We have recommended several treatments for various stages of colorectal cancer, including cetuximab for the first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer.

"We are disappointed not to be able to recommend bevacizumab as well but we have to be confident that the benefits justify the considerable cost of this drug."

Clinical data on Avastin shows that it gives patients around six more weeks of life. In studies, patients typically lived for 21.3 months compared with 19.9 months without the drug. The drug also shrinks liver tumours, with 78 per cent of patients seeing their tumours shrink to an operable level.

Ian Beaumont, campaigns director at Bowel Cancer UK, said: "We are naturally disappointed that NICE has turned down bevacizumab (Avastin) for use on the NHS when there is so much evidence of the treatment's efficacy and it is so widely available to patients across the rest of Europe."

Mr Beaumont said he hoped the Government's interim cancer drugs fund - £50 million from October - would benefit bowel cancer patients.

His colleague, chief medical officer Rob Glynne-Jones, said that refusing the drug on the NHS would see Britain fall even further in worldwide cancer treatment league tables.

A spokesman for drug manufacturer Roche agreed.

"The fact that the UK is now virtually the only country in the developed world not to provide Avastin for bowel cancer patients through the state healthcare service is further evidence that the current UK reimbursement system is not appropriate for end of life cancer treatments," he said.

"The value that bevacizumab brings in this setting is well recognised."

source: channel 4 news