The revolution in NHS cancer treatment

Don’t get us wrong here, we think this is a good thing that is happening:

Park – who is married and lives in Edinburgh – was recently asked to join a revolutionary UK research programme known as Determine. It has has been set up to target individuals with rare tumours in the hope that drugs licensed for more common cancers could be appropriated as a new treatment.

“By definition, rare cancers are uncommon,” said one of the project’s leaders, oncologist Matthew Krebs of Manchester University. “However, there are so many of them that in total they represent around 20% of all cancers that are diagnosed globally each year – more than any single type of cancer including lung, breast and colorectal cancer.

Rare cancers’ total impact on the health service is therefore significant but there are few treatments currently available to help patients. Determine has been set up to find if drugs that are already prescribed by doctors for more common types of cancer could benefit patients with rare cancers for which they have not been licensed.

We would just point out one important thing. That word “licensed”.

The crucial point is that, with recent advances in DNA analysis, scientists have discovered some very rare tumours possess abnormalities that could make them susceptible to treatments developed for common cancers. “We will be able to fast-track the approval of any promising drugs, opening the door to treatments for patients who have historically been left with limited options,” said Iain Foulkes, the executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK.

This is about the approval process, the license. This is about getting through the bureaucracy that currently prevents these known to be effective against one cancer drugs to be used upon other cancers.

You know that vile, market based and capitalist American health care service? Any drug licensed for any use can be used by any doctor to treat anything she cares to try it out upon. “Off label” it’s called.

Markets in health care are such terrible things, aren’t they?