Tag Archives: saatchibill

Telegraph: Lord Saatchi, ‘Cuts to cancer drug funding will cause ‘great anxiety’ for thousands’

Telegraph-Cancer-Drugs-Fund

Published in the Telegraph By Ben Riley-Smith, Political 
12 Jan 2015

Thousands of Britons with cancer will be plunged into “great anxiety” because of cuts to crucial drug treatments announced on Monday, Lord (Maurice) Saatchi has warned.

The Conservative peer and advertising mogul told The Telegraph his life has been “immersed” with cancer recently with loved ones battling the same disease that took his wife as he criticised the scaling back of NHS funding.

It comes as charities and industry experts warned that NHS England’s expected decision to stop funding a series of cancer drugs was “short-sighted” and would endanger lives.

A review by the Cancer Drugs Fund, introduced in 2011 after the Conservatives pledged cancer patients would no longer be denied drugs on grounds of cost, is published today.

As many as half of the 25 drugs under review – which are used in 42 treatments – could have funding pulled according to industry sources.

The move comes amid spiralling costs, with the initial £200 million budget set aside by the Coalition already having increased to £280 given demand.

However the expected ‘delisting’ of potentially life-changing drugs has triggered uproar from cancer charities who fear the impact of pulling the funding on future patients.

Lord Saatchi, whose Medical Innovation Bill is being debated in Parliament and would increase the ability of doctors to try out new medicines on willing patients, said the funding cuts were of “great concern”.

“There is a sense of possibility with the Cancer Drugs Fund. Withdrawing funding is going to cause people who would potentially benefit from the treatments great anxiety,” Lord Saatchi told this newspaper.

However he noted that the fund could never alone answer why there has not been more innovation in cancer treatments and called for “big, cultural, systematic change”.

“I am immersed with cancer as friends and loved ones around me suffer from the same disease which also took my wife [the novelist Josephine Hart],” said Lord Saatchi.

“What I faced – as thousands do across the country – is the problem that doctors are only able to use those tools that are in front of them.

“I don’t want cancer patients to be told drugs can only stem their dying – that is a guarantee of failure. I want us to give people the opportunity to try to survive.”

It is understood pharmaceutical companies were given until the end of Friday by NHS England to justify why cancer drugs they produce should still receive funding.

At least eight life-extending treatments will be denied funding, with drugs that offer a last chance to patients with breast, prostate and bowel disease among those affected.

Prof Karol Sikora, chief medical officer at Cancer Partners UK and one of the country’s leading cancer experts, told The Telegraph the situation was “very sad”.

“Why cant the NHS negotiate better with the pharma industry so that our patients can have equivalence with the rest of Europe? Sure these are all expensive but lives have been prolonged significantly,” he said.

“To know that there is a drug out there that might give you a chance and to be turned down is not what our patients need.”

In a letter to this newspaper, Jonathan Emms, president of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, warned against the NHS cutting funding for medicines.

“The NHS already spends less than £1 in every £10 on medicine. Further cuts would be short-sighted and compromise patient care,” he said.

“Innovation in medicines is moving faster than the health system can deliver to patients. The NHS needs to catch up.”

Danni Manzi, head of policy at Breast Cancer Care, said: “This re-evaluation shows yet again that the Cancer Drugs Fund is not fit for purpose. We hope that none of the breast cancer drugs are removed due to cost.

“Having secondary, incurable breast cancer is devastating – and these patients should be entitled to improved quality of life and extra time with their loved-ones.”

“Until this is resolved cancer patients could miss out on vital treatment. We must urgently find a long-term, sustainable system that works.”

Solicitors Journal: Saatchi Bill will stifle explosion of NHS litigation

Solicitors-Journal

 

Published in the Solicitors Journal 6th January 2015

There has been much heat generated by the debate over the Medical Innovation Bill. Only recently, some described it as a ‘PR war’.

It is – or ought to be – no such thing, and I appeal for calm consideration on all sides.

For two years, Lord Saatchi, parliamentary counsel Daniel Greenberg and I have been talking to doctors, lawyers and patients about how best to encourage medical innovation in order to facilitate better, faster and safe discovery of more effective treatments for currently incurable diseases.

Indeed, we have held meetings with leading medical negligence lawyers and have adapted the Bill accordingly, and it has changed in light of the feedback and challenges given.

This feedback has been gratefully received, by the concerned parties mentioned, as well as former senior judges, politicians and former opponents.

Few would agree that the medical status quo is working well for patients with rare diseases for whom randomised clinical trials (RCTs) are not an option – often because there are few trials open to them, because the cohort numbers are insufficent to populate them.

→READ: Why there will never be enough trials by Professor Walker

But let me be clear. This is not in anyway a derogation of the importance of RCTs. Evidence-based medicine is the gold standard. And it is why we are still committed to logging on a central, open database all innovations under the Bill – so that incidental evidence can be built up and taken forward to full RCTs.

It is, however, a statement of what to many is obvious; RCTs are not the answer for every disease type and every patient. One size does not fit all.

An example – and there are many – how many trials are open in the UK to patients with aneuroendocrine tumour? The answer is one.

Putting aside the fact that the trial is not about researching a potential cure, but comparing two current treatments, neither of which will save lives, there is an exclusion list that rules out many patients.

I am one of them. Two years ago I was diagnosed with a nueroedocrine tumour. I had surgery. If it comes back, I will be excluded from this trial because I am an insulin-dependent diabetic.

In short, there is no trial available. This is the case for so many currently incurable diseases.

Under the Bill, a doctor can be given the necessary confidence, in appropriate cases, to investigate and, if appropriate, offer, an innovative treatment to such a patient outside an RCT.

However, the Medical Innovation Bill is only one of a raft of initiatives that either are – or should – be in play. No one – including Lord Saatchi – claims this Bill is the silver bullet.

As an aside, Lord Saatchi did once pose the question: ‘How can an Act of Parliament cure cancer?’ He answered his own rhetorical question thus: It can’t – but it will enable the men and women who will. It is a question that has unintentionally riled those who have allowed themselves to get angry about the Bill. I say again, this Bill is no cure-all, but is an important step forward.

Bolam test

What does the Bill do? In short it brings forward the Bolam test to a pre-treatment setting. Doctors wishing to avail themselves of protection under the Bill must build a responsible body of medical opinion prior to treatment, rather than hoping they can construct one after the event, if they are sued for negligence or threatened with disciplinary proceedings.

This is designed to give doctors and patients certainty and clarity at the point of treatment, and therefore the necessary confidence to proceed and innovate.

First, this does not mean a doctor must follow this procedure. Some doctors, especially high ranking ones in centres of excellence, may be confident to innovate now.

Others tell us they are not. This Bill is for them. Doctors will have a choice – to rely on Bolam or the Bill.

To defeat a claim of clinical negligence under Bolam, a healthcare professional is required to adduce evidence from respected peers within their speciality who agree with the standard of practice which is the subject of the action..

Under Bolam, a defendant doctor will not be deemed to have been at fault, providing his or her course of action is one that is professionally backed by appropriately experienced colleagues, even if certain other members of the medical profession may take an opposing view. The Bill requires the same, but in advance and with greater clarity.

There has been much made of the requirement in the Bill to ‘obtain the views of’ other doctors, rather than requiring their ‘agreement’ to proceed.

We considered introducing a requirement for agreement, and were persuaded against it by senior doctors. They were worried that being asked formally to approve a colleague’s proposed course of treatment would act as a deterrent, and doctors would feel reluctant to do so without having a complete history. However, they would be happy to feed in their own views, as they already do in many contexts.

As with the Bolam test now, a responsible body of medical opinion supports the treatment – unanimity is not required – so that no one consultee has a veto on a patient’s treatment,

Instead of consultation taking place after the event if the doctor is sued, under the Bill it will take place prior to treatment: views have to be obtained, and there is an express requirement to give effect to them in a reasonable way. The profession, and ultimately the courts, will give guidance on what that means in practice.

Doctors simply ignoring the views of experienced colleagues who were clearly opposed to the treatment could not expect protection under the Bill. And the same goes for doctors who simply surround themselves with ‘yes men’ to approve their proposed treatments.

Culture change

But the Bill is more than a prosaic piece of putative legislation. The Bill also works on another level.

It will allow more doctors to consider innovating as a matter of course, rather than defaulting to procedures that are known not to work. In this respect, the Bill acts as an agent of culture change. It has also stirred welcome debate on how we can drive innovation in healthcare.

Some opponents say the Bill targets the wrong issue. To them I say two things: first, it is an answer to some of these issues. There is a culture of defensive medicine growing in the UK, fuelled in part by the explosion of medical negligence suits against the NHS. This Bill will help to moderate that, safely and sensibly.

Second, it is now for people of goodwill to use the space created in the media by this debate to offer solutions to the problems faced by patients, for whom evidence-based medicine is chimera, and who will die waiting in the queue for the never-to-happen clinical trial.

Dominic Nutt works with Lord Saatchi and Daniel Greenberg on the Medical Innovation Bill

Published in the Solicitors Journal 6th January 2015

Guest blog: Saatchi Bill and Medical Anecdotes

By scientist Pan Pantziarka, a scientist in the UK employed by the Anticancer Fund of Belgium. Pan works on drug research as part of the Repurposing Drugs in Oncology project

Re-blogged with permission from  anticancer.org.uk

 

Opponents of the Medical Innovation Bill (aka as the Saatchi Bill), such as Sarah Wollaston MP, have been very vocal in attacking the Bill by making a number of false claims about what the Bill will do.

One such argument is that the Bill will undermine medical progress by doing away with clinical trials, and that instead we will just have to rely on individual anecdotes that arise from doctors using innovative off-label treatments on patients. In fact Sarah Wollaston even referred to the Bill as the ‘Medical Anecdotes Bill’ in her recent speech in the House of Commons.

There are a number of points that to raise in response to this false assertion.

First, there is no intention to replace clinical trials. The Bill is about treating patients with no place left to turn – these are people who have exhausted standard therapies and for whom there are few options left to explore. If a clinical trial is open and the patient is eligible then that is the place to go if it is in the patient’s best interest. There may be cases where it is the right thing to do, just as there are cases when it will not benefit the patient who is offered the additional choice of an non-standard treatment (for example an off-label drug with evidence of clinical activity in the patient’s illness). This will be decided on a case by case basis, what it will not do is force doctors to ignore clinical trials or undermine the trials process.

We also have to keep in mind that for many rarer cancers, genetic conditions and chronic illnesses there are few clinical trials available. Just as important, even when there are clinical trials open, many patients may not be eligible because of prior treatments, confounding conditions, age or physical status restrictions and so on. What are patients supposed to do when they cannot gain access to clinical trials?

Many of the opponents of the Bill act as if there are no unmet patient needs, as if every patient has access to trials and that there is no need to consider alternatives.

Secondly, rather than leaving us with a collection of anecdotes, the Bill offers the prospect of making a huge step forward in medicine through the creation of a central database to record patient data.

This database will be hosted at Oxford University, and work is progressing with the Department of Health to work out the details. A central database which will record each patient’s details, the treatment they receive and their outcomes is actually a hugely advance in medicine.

With all of the patient data recorded we do not have a collection of anecdotes but a database that we can mine and explore and use to design clinical trials based on the signals we can glean from real patient data. It also means that non-standard treatments that work can be identified more quickly, and just as importantly those that do not work can also be identified and discouraged.

This isn’t a replacement for the clinical trial, it’s an advance on the system we now have.

The central database is really the essential piece that makes the Bill so compelling. It offers doctors looking for innovative treatments a chance to explore and learn from the experience of their colleagues.

Many of the opponents of the Bill suggest that it is not needed – they claim that doctors are already free to innovate and explore non-standard therapies. But what is not in place now is a standard process for this to occur, nor a method by which doctors can learn from each other and help to evolve the breakthroughs we so badly need.

And, finally, a central database means that patient safety will be increased. As all data has to be recorded, those unscrupulous individuals prescribing crank treatments will have to reveal their data, they will no longer be able to keep their results away from scrutiny as they now can.

About the author:

Pan Pantziarka is a scientist in the UK employed by the Anticancer Fund of Belgium. He works on drug research as part of the Repurposing Drugs in Oncology project. He is also the co-founder and chairman of the George Pantziarka TP53 Trust, the only charity in the UK dedicated to supporting families with an inherited cancer predisposition condition called Li Fraumeni Syndrome. He lost his first wife to ovarian cancer when she was 29, and his son George died in 2011 at the age of 17 from osetosarcoma.

Further reading:

→READ: Oxford University offer to host the database

→READ:Prof Walker writes – there will never be enough clinical trials

 

 

House of Lords report stage

On Friday 12th December 2014 the House of Lords report stage for the Medical Innovation Bill took place.

The Bill has now moved through to a third reading stage.

Watch the full debate here

→READ: The debate in Hansard

→READ: The Bill as amended in report stage

→READ: All the documents relating to the Bill and the report stage debate

A few highlighted extracts :

Lord Saatchi (Con): Before I start, I will take a moment to echo what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said. He described the discussions about the Bill at all its stages as being your Lordships’ House at its best. I so agree.

I said in the debate in the Moses Room last week in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, that the experience of watching your Lordships’ House debate and discuss the Bill is, as far as I am concerned, a tremendous privilege to be able to hear the greatest legal and medical minds in the country at work.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, for saying that there had been a constructive process of listening to Peers’ views as expressed in Committee. I am also grateful for the view expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, that the Bill team and the Department of Health have behaved constructively since Committee.

I have really been only a witness to the toing and froing between Peers whose views were expressed in Committee and the Department of Health through our own Bill team.

It will not come as any surprise to your Lordships that this has been a really admirable process of the officials and the legislation department in the Department of Health listening carefully and trying to respond, and I certainly have appreciated that hugely. I know your Lordships will agree.

I also thank my noble friend the Minister for her clarification of the Government’s position on many of these amendments.

 

Baroness Wheeler (Lab): My Lords, as this is the first contribution from the Front Bench to the discussion of today’s amendments, perhaps I may again place on the record our support for the key principles and intent of the Bill.

As we stress, Labour has always strongly supported efforts to bring innovative treatments to patients faster, and we underline the need for a major effort by government to address the barriers and bureaucracy that prevent progress being made and ensure that innovations are rapidly transcribed into practice.

The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, recently held a short debate in the Moses Room on the impact of innovation and research strategies on health improvement. It provided an excellent overview of the key issues, the progress being made, and the problems still to be addressed.

We are keen to ensure that the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, is seen in the context of this wider, bigger picture.

I know that the noble Lord accepts that his Bill will be one measure in the broader landscape of what needs to be done.

Along with my noble friend Lord Turnberg, I am also grateful to the noble Lord for the efforts he has made to address the issues and concerns raised by noble Lords across the House.

In Committee we underlined our broad support for the changes—the “Sir Bruce Keogh amendments”, as they are now known—which have been made to ensure patient safety and safeguarding.

We also found the round-table discussions for Peers that were organised by the noble Lord following our suggestions in Committee very valuable and useful.

Again, we are broadly supportive of the new amendments he has brought forward today, which are the result of the discussions, on emergency care, on the recording of key information in the notes of the patient receiving the treatment, on excluding cosmetic surgery from the scope of the Bill, and on ensuring the preservation of the existing law about clinical trials and other forms of research.

Lord Woolf (CB): The progress of the Bill has been a remarkable example of this House at its very best.

The Bill has been very carefully scrutinised by people who have immense knowledge of the areas covered in the Bill.

That does not mean that anything said by a particular Member of the House with undoubted expertise in this area is necessarily right in this matter.

As is the case with many Bills, sometimes more than one profession can be involved.

I suggest that this is an example where two professions, which in the past have been guilty at times of excessive conservatism, are involved and have been loud in some of the things that they have had to say.

The other profession of which I am thinking is my own; lawyers are not always celebrated for their innovative approach.

They have improved from the situation of not so long ago. They are more ready to accept change—indeed, they have been forced to accept it—than they willingly would have done in the early days when I was practising.

I have been criticised in letters I have received in a way in which I perhaps am not accustomed for my involvement in the Bill sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi.

Those who have asked me to identify cases by name and reference so that they can analyse the cases and show how they do not help any particular argument might be relieved to hear me say that if they want to know where I come from, I wrote a little book called The Pursuit of Justice.

I focused on the medical profession at that time because I found that its conservatism was interfering with the pursuit of justice.

As far as victims were concerned, one of the most difficult areas of litigation in this country was clinical negligence cases.

Both sides in those cases were put into great difficulty because of that conservatism. On one side were the patients who often wanted the doctors to say sorry. On the other side were the doctors who felt that they could not say sorry because if they did they would be admitting liability for negligence. So the two never met—and that, I am afraid, can happen.

I listened very carefully to the graphic examples given by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, of where he thought that the Bill could be a problem.

In his first example, he said that there was a difference of opinion between his anaesthetist, who did not think that an unusual and innovative form of intervention was appropriate, and the noble Lord, who thought that it was appropriate in the circumstances.

Happily, he took the initiative and acted in an innovative way. But if one pauses and thinks about what would have been the position under the Bill as it is at present, would it have made the situation more difficult or would it have alleviated the situation?

I suggest it is quite clear that it would have done neither.

 

Medical Innovation Bill – adjournment debate

George Freeman during Bill Adjournment debate
George Freeman, MInister for Life Sciences, speaking during the adjournment debate

Yesterday December 10, 2014 Sarah Wollaston MP was granted leave to hold an adjournment debate on the Medical Innovation Bill.

The Bill team were also invited to meet Dr Wollaston earlier in the week to discuss the Bill. We thank her for that meeting and for requesting the debate.

During the debate Dr Wollaston raised several important points about the Bill, which could formally come to the Commons in early January.

The points revolve around patient safety and scientific rigour – issues which have been raised by senior doctors and lawyers in the House of Lords and which have been discussed with peers in committee and in bilateral meetings with Lord Saatchi, health ministers Earl Howe, George Freeman and Department of Health lawyers and officials.

On the back of these meetings, amendments have been laid which address the issues raised, and they will be further debated on Friday (December 12) in the Lords.

Edit: This debate has now taken place. Read here.

Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies and NHS chief Sir Bruce Keogh, who has inputted into the Bill himself, remain satisfied that the Bill is robust, safe and will enhance, not hinder scientific research.

Summing up in favour of the Bill, Minister George Freeman said:

‘I want to close with some supportive quotes the Bill has received from a number of important people, lest the House should form the view that it is unanimously opposed, which is not the case.

 

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, has said:

“I am confident that, with the amendments made in Committee stage, the Bill is safe for patients and has the potential to encourage responsible innovation.”

 

Sir Bruce Keogh, Medical Director of the NHS, said:

“Encouraging innovation in medicine and protecting patients are both of vital importance. That is why I am pleased that amendments have been devised to address concerns about patient safety.”

 

Sir Michael Rawlins, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, said that the Bill will allow responsible innovation and treatment:

“I believe the use of the provisions in the draft Medical Innovation Bill will benefit patients, especially those with rarer diseases, and the furtherance of medical science.”

 

A letter to The Telegraph from 40 leading medical professionals, including David Walker, professor of paediatric oncology at Nottingham university and Riccardo Audisio, the president of the Association of Cancer Surgery, said the Bill

“legally protects doctors who try out innovative new techniques or drugs on patients when all else has failed. This Bill will protect the patient and nurture the innovator. It will encourage safe medical advancement, while at the same time deterring the maverick, thereby recalibrating the culture of defensive medicine. Finally, it will work with evidence-based medicine and provide new data that will inspire and support new research.”

I hope very much that that is the case and that when the Bill leaves the House of Lords, the vast majority of qualified senior opinion in this field is able to agree with it. It is absolutely our intention to support the Bill’s noble intent to promote medical innovation, but equally our intention is to not undermine in any way the Government’s commitment to patient safety or the duty of care that all clinicians share and owe to their patients.’

→Read: The full text in Hansard 

 

 

Amendments to be moved on report – 12th December 2014

Following the Committee Stage in the House of Lords on 24th October Lord Saatchi has tabled a set of amendments to be considered on Report on 12th December.

The amendments were prepared by the Department of Health  to respond to concerns raised by peers and others at and around the Committee Stage.

We are very grateful for all the input we have received.

The Bill is going through the usual Parliamentary process and amendments are part of that process.

→READ: The Bill has been amended many times. Why?

→READ: Download the amendments on the Parliament website.

The following explanatory notes have been prepared by parliamentary draftsman Daniel Greenberg.

MEDICAL INNOVATION BILL [HL] EXPLANATORY NOTES TO AMENDMENTS FOR REPORT TABLED BY LORD SAATCHI
ON WEDNESDAY 3rd DECEMBER 2014

Introduction

  1. On 3rd December 2014 Lord Saatchi tabled a set of amendments to his Medical Innovation Bill to be considered on Report on 12th December.
  2. The amendments were prepared by the Department for Health to respond to concerns raised by peers and others at and around the Committee Stage.
  3. These Notes explain the manner in which the amendments meet the concerns expressed.

Transparency: patients’ notes; and recording outcome of consultation

  1. Some peers wanted details of decisions to innovate to be recorded in patients’ notes.
  2. Peers and others have also expressed a wish to see greater transparency about the nature of responses received by the doctor when undertaking the consultation with colleagues required by clause 1(3)(a) and (b).
  3. Amendment 1 requires the results of the consultation to be recorded in the patient’s notes, together with details of the doctor’s decision to innovate.
  4. There has also been pressure to turn the requirement to consult colleagues into a requirement to obtain colleagues’ written consent. These amendments do not give effect to that suggestion. Senior doctors consulted by Lord Saatchi expressed concern about giving formal written consent to another doctor’s proposed course of treatment, without knowing the full history and other circumstances, while they would be relaxed about expressing a view of the soundness of the doctor’s proposal as described to them. Lawyers consulted were also concerned about a possible new form of legal liability for consenting doctors. The requirement to record views in the patient’s notes should introduce the necessary formality, transparency and accountability, while avoiding both of these objections.

Preservation of existing law about clinical trials and other forms of research

  1. It has always been the intention of the Bill to make no change of the law relating to research (see clause 1(5)). But concerns were expressed that this needs to be made even clearer.
  2. Amendments 2 and 3 are designed to put the point beyond possible doubt.

Exclusion of cosmetic surgery

  1. At the Committee Stage and elsewhere suggestions have been made that the Bill should be confined expressly to the principal kinds of case at which it is aimed, namely relatively rare terminal cancers and other terminal conditions.
  2. Lord Saatchi has reconsidered attempting to define the intended scope of the Bill, but has found it impossible to do so in a way that answers more questions than it raises.
  3. Much of the concern has centred around the potential use of the Bill in relation to cosmetic surgery, and it was suggested that it could at least be made clear that it is not the purpose of the Bill to apply to that.

13. Amendment 4 accordingly excludes cosmetic surgery from the Bill. (Cosmetic surgery can of course in some cases be crucial to life or quality of life – as in the case of severe burns; doctors wishing to innovate in such cases will be able to rely on the existing common law Bolam test.)

Emergency treatment; and preservation of common law

14. Concern has been expressed whether in emergency situations doctors will realise that they are not expected to follow the procedures set out in the Bill.

15. Amendment 5 accordingly introduces a reference to emergencies, as an example of a situation in which the existing common law Bolam test would apply and a doctor might not engage the procedures in the Bill.

16. Amendment 6 recasts the principle that the Bill does not force doctors to rely on its procedures and that they can simply rely on the existing Bolam test in all cases. The new form is designed to meet concerns expressed as to whether the intention of existing clause 2(2)(a) was sufficiently clear.

17. Amendment 7 is a consequential amendment to reflect the numbering changes effected by Amendment 5.

Daniel Greenberg 3rd December 2014 

 

Why the Medical Innovation bill will be safer for patients

Surgery medical innovation from Flickr by Phalinn

Critics of the Medical Innovation Bill like to say that patients will be at risk from doctors trying out new treatments because they will somehow be protected from negligence claims.

This is wrong for two reasons. A patient will be safer under this bill than under current common law.

First, a doctor wishing to rely on the bill must obtain the views of at least one other qualified doctor experienced in the patient’s condition.

This must be done in advance of treatment. Under current law, a doctor does not need to consult with colleagues; there is no legal requirement to take account of, or even obtain, the views of other doctors.

Therefore, the Medical innovation Bill is a step forward for patient safety.

It has been argued by some that the necessity to obtain the views – while not requiring their full agreement – is also a danger. This is not so.

A doctor wishing to innovate under the bill could not ignore advice because no judge would find in favour of a doctor who proceeded with an innovation against the advice of colleagues.

The Bill obliges the innovating doctor not only to seek the views of others before treating the patient, it also obliges the doctor to obtain all the standard consents necessary under current law.

Hence, a doctor must do what he or she does now AND build consensus for his or her innovation as well.

Therefore, those who like the current innovation process will welcome the Medical Innovation Bill for adding an extra level of patient protection.

Does the Bill falsely promising ‘miracle cures’ for all patients?

The Bill does not offer false hope.

It is for the doctor to manage the expectations of the patient.

However, hope is not a bad thing. consider trying novel treatments and encourages a patient to read and research and if, between the doctor and patient it is decided that it is worth innovating, then that is a good thing – and arguably better than the false hope a doctor gives when offering standard treatments that are known to fail.

Why is research specifically excluded from the Bill?

It is vital that the Bill does not facilitate reckless experimentation nor allow patients to be used as laboratory mice.

The bill excludes the use of treatment specifically as just research. It allows only for treatment that is in the best interests of the patient.

However, this does not stand as an obstacle to the furtherance of medical knowledge.

In trying novel treatments in the best interests of the patient it is likely that new and successful ways of treating diseases will emerge.

Guardian: Lord Saatchi responds to the Times letter

Lord Saatchi Guardian

Published in the Guardian 14th November 2014

The 100 doctors who wrote to the Times rubbishing my medical innovation bill are the authentic voice of complacency. Let us help them to move on

Writes Lord Saatchi

How many of the 300,000 British citizens diagnosed with cancer this year will receive an innovative treatment?

The answer, according to the awesome House of Lords Library, is 5.6%. In other words, 94.4% of Britain’s cancer patients will receive only the standard procedure. In the endless repetition of a failed experiment, 165,000 of them will die. You would need a fleet of JCB’s biggest excavators to dig the mass grave for this year’s cancer dead.

This is why I proposed the medical innovation bill, which is now before parliament. If passed, it will allow doctors to try reasonable innovative treatments, so long as they have the agreement of the patient (or patient’s representative) and of a panel of medical specialists.

The bill has the support of No 10, the secretary of state for health, the UK chief medical officer, the government’s chief scientific adviser, the medical director of the NHS, Britain’s top judges and 20,000 respondents to the government’s public consultation on the bill. But it is opposed by 100 doctors, who wrote a letter to the Times this week [paywalled link] saying the bill is rubbish.

How I pity their patients.

Theirs is the authentic voice of complacency and self-satisfaction, as in one of their quotes: “It is time that people listened to the experts.” These doctors sound like Lady Ludlow in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Cranford. She objected to the education of poor people on the grounds that “it is becoming common for the lowest class to have some education … the proper order of the world will be undone.” The doctors may not have realised that the age of deference is over – not just in medicine but in politics and all walks of life.

The “Times 100” insist that the only method of scientific advance is the clinical trial. Perhaps they overlooked the view of the forefather of the randomised controlled trial, Sir Austin Bradford Hill, who said: “Any belief that the controlled trial is the only way [to study therapeutic efficacy] would mean not that the pendulum had swung too far, but that it had come right off its hook”. Or maybe they missed the view of Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford, who says there will be no cure for cancer “until real doctors with real patients in real hospitals can attempt an innovation”.

What sort of people do these 100 people think we are? Are we downstairs in Downton? Are we supposed to doff our cloth caps as these doctors go past us in Harley Street in their horse-drawn carriages?

They are living in another era. Our iPads can follow the proceedings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Melbourne at the same time as they do.

Let us help them to move on. In the modern era, any half-decent protest movement such as theirs needs a logo. They say a picture tells a thousand words, so here is their picture – a shrug of the shoulders.

They need a good simple “narrative” that gets to the essence of what they are saying. Here it is: “Save the status quo!”

That slogan will look good on a poster. Let them put it up in Britain’s hospices, where 80% of the patients – with a life expectancy of two weeks – are dying of cancer.