Woman wins Herceptin court appeal

The Guardian is reporting that a woman has wom a case in the High Court to receive Herceptin treatment for her breast cancer, despite the drug not being approved for use in early-stage cancers such as she has.

As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a lot of hype surrounding the use of Herceptin. Now, there are a couple of issues in this case. First, this woman had been prescribed Herceptin by her doctor but the Healthcare Trust in her area wouldn’t let her have it on the NHS because it’s not approved. I see no trouble with this – doctors routinely prescribe things that their patients have to buy. It is absolutely not the case that anything a doctor prescribes must be available on the NHS. The problem here is that the judges took the (to me) bizarre stance that it is “irrational” to provide a drug to some people and not to others. Most of us can, though, see no contradiction between allowing a drug to be used in cases for which it has been approved and disallowing its use in cases for which it hasn’t been approved.

Despite various pronouncements made during this case (such as “Ms Rogers, 54, had said she faced a “death sentence” if she was not provided with the treatment.“, implying that Herceptin would save her life), Herceptin is not a wonder drug against cancer. When used in combination with other drugs, it provides a few percentage points improvement in survival rates during the first year. This is obviously very worthwhile, but it’s a very long way from “a wonder drug” or “a life-saving treatment”. Crucially, there are no data available on what the long-term advantages (or disadvantages) of using Herceptin might be – but we do know that 5% of women taking the drug developed severe heart problems while using it, including congestive heart failure.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 1:17pm on 12 April 2006
Category: Politics, Science, Struggling, General

Yes – all of this on the very same day they were talking about forcing overspending NHS trusts to balance their books.

“So tell me, judge, who should we allow to die, so that Ms Rogers can have her doubtfully necessary and/or effective herceptin?”

tony () (URL)
11:43am on 13 April 2006