Powerful plea from patients in support of Medical Innovation Bill

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The Sunday Times have today published a letter in support of the Medical Innovation Bill from 100 patients and family who have lost loved ones.

The group, which includes Andrew Lloyd Webber, Melvyn Bragg and the publisher Gail Rebuck, widow of the Labour grandee Philip Gould, today issue a powerful plea for dying patients to be given access to experimental drugs and other treatments.

The Bill has moved recently into the House of Commons, having been passed unanimously by the House of Lords.

Last week senior oncologists wrote to Telegraph this week 100 patients & family write to Times.

The letter this week to the Sunday Times follows a supportive letter last week to the Telegraph from senior oncologists, researchers and patient groups.

→READ: Letter to the Telegraph from senior oncologists, researchers and patient groups.

READ: Letter to the Sunday Times – a powerful plea

We are a group united by grief.

We are the bereaved – widows, widowers, brothers, sisters and parents who have lost loved ones to incurable diseases.

We are the parents fighting for the lives of our children who have cancers and degenerative diseases.

We are the patients dying for an answer to our own illnesses.

We have never met each other. But we share a bond of pain and fear.

And we are united in our support for The Medical Innovation Bill.

Not because we believe that it is the silver bullet.

Not because we think if it is passed that tomorrow there will suddenly be new cures for cancers, for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and other killer diseases.

We support the Medical Innovation Bill because it gives us hope – hope that doctors will feel more confident to try novel approaches to killer diseases for which current treatments are known not to work.

We support the Medical Innovation Bill because it offers hope to people yet to face what we have faced.

We support the Medical Innovation Bill because it will inspire doctors to innovate and to collect and share the results of their innovations so that medical science is advanced.

We know it will give doctors confidence and legal clarity to try more and to do more.

The patient’s voice has been drowned out. We have been patronised and told we must leave it to the experts.

But we have watched – and are watching – our families die. Some of us are watching our own bodies die.

Doctors have the medical experience.  But we have the human experience.  Nobody knows more about these fatal diseases than we do.

As the Bill proceeds to The Commons, our voice will be heard.

 Gail Rebuck

Sir Michael and Lady Pakenham

Lord and Lady Lloyd-Webber

Victoria Gray

Antonia Wellington

Lord Bragg

Sir Christopher Bland

Frieda Hughes

Vita Paladino

Lord Foster

Debbie Binner

Tom Parker-Bowles

Sara Parker Bowles

Richard Kitley

Mavis Nye

Ray Nye

Omaira Gill

Alex Smith

Rose Fletcher

Claire Cowley

Paul Cowley

Annette Gration

Philip Gration

Pat Hay

Julia Samuel

Sir Henry Keswick

Vivian Duffield

Neil Hay

Mary Toms

Nathan Toms

Barbara Whitehead

Julie Cooper

Christine Winters

Esther Driscol

James Driscol

Maurice Chambers

Beverley Chambers

Gemma Chambers

Clare Smith Daughter

Stauroulla Parker

Michele Parker

Dorothy Vaux

Diane Salisbury

Betty Salisbury

Pauline Debra

Debra Stuart

Stuart Faulser

Jan Weston

Cathy Dear

Elaine Bounds

Karyanne Todd

Amanda Reynolds

Steve Wride

Linda Wride

Richard Elson

Jackie Elson

Dr Irene Kappes

David Wilshire

Faye Wiltshire

Patricia Wiltshire

Dawn Fiddler

Barbara Scott

Robert Scott

Barbara Hampel

Billy Jenkins

Hannah Richards

Angela Davies

Michael Lasseter

Pan Pantziarka

Gail Mathe

Elaine Mitchell

Louis Brooks

Julia Travers-Wakeford

Lawrence Tansley

Sue North

William Pope

Diana Boyle

Robert Johnson

Karen Waldron

Ian White

Gayle McElhinney

Patricia Stubbs

David Williams

Jonathan Stubbs,

Julie Williams

Jane Weitzmann

Jen Selig

Sally Greene

Emily Crossley

Nick Crossley

Tony Levene

Paul Fitzpatrick

Lord Smith of Clifton

Alex Johnson

Andy Johnson

Lara Veitch

Natasha Bramble

Kerry Rosenfield

Doron Rosenfield

Emma Hallam

Andy Hallam

Steven Ho

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