A drug, Nexavar – also known as Sorafenib, can prolong the lives of patients with advanced liver cancer by up to six months. but has been rejected for use in the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Nexavar is routinely offered to cancer patients elsewhere in the world.

NICE, (The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), or should that be “National Institute for Cost Effectiveness” because they have more to do with cost effectiveness than clinical excellence!  NICE, said that at about £3,000 a month, the cost of Nexavar was, “simply too high”.

Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician Peter Johnson said the decision was “enormously frustrating” because there was no doubt about the drug’s effectiveness.  Acknowledging that it is expensive, (define expensive),  he said: “There’s no alternative treatment and there are no other places for people to go”.  However, he pointed out that whilst the only issue is cost, the number of patients affected are probably only six or seven hundred patients a year.”

The decision was similarly condemned by Alison Rogers, chief executive of the British Liver Trust,  and Mike Hobday, head of campaigns at Macmillan Cancer Support.  Mike Hobday said, “It is a scandal that the only licensed drug proven to significantly prolong the lives of people with this devastating disease has been rejected, leaving them with no treatment options…”

Andrew Dillon, chief executive of NICE  said, “The price being asked by [the manufacturer] Bayer is simply too high to justify using NHS money which could be spent on better value cancer treatments”.
Like what? Prat! There ARE none!

And the group’s clinical and public health director, Peter Littlejohns, added the drug was considered “just too expensive” by its advisory committees.
Wrong! Look at your own remit.  It has a cap on affordability of £30k per patient for a quality year of life, but given that it only extends life by 6 months, then the cost per patient is half the £35k cost, £17.5k.

Dillon is reported as saying that he loves his job and says, “This is the best job I have ever had.”   Bollocks! You like the £130,000 salary you get!  He has been described as ‘… quiet, calm and understated, with all the apparent passion of a paperclip’.
Well Mr Dillon, you need to get a bit of passion, because you have condemed a few hundred people a year to an earlier grave and a poorer quality of life than possible and necessary.  For £130,000 a year!  You are not worth the blood that runs in your veins.

Here’s a thought; It costs 30,000,000 per year to keep NICE open.  There are about 46 employees.  How the hell does it spend the money?

So, how could you spend the money that extending my life is not worth?
You could pay a top footballer, say, Frank Lampard, to kick a ball of wind around for 35 minutes. (£630,000 per month).  No, let’s not go down that route, it’s too easy a target.
Let’s get real!

You could pay for a years supply of Methadone for just two drug addicts.  After all, there’s only 147,500 of them at £14,924,067 a year in the UK.  Source: Department of Health.
Actually, the effectiveness both medically and financially is questionable, but we have NICE to make those sorts of decisions don’t we?

You could lock up a drug dealer for his crimes for 12 months at a mere £31,106 a year.  Source: Scottish Prison Services (couldn’t find the UK figures).

You could remove 176 unwanted tattoos from people who have been a bit silly.   There were 187,086 in 2006 at a cost to the NHS of between £37,000,000 to £300,000,000 in 2006. (The NHS doesn’t know the exact figure but offers these as a guide). Source: House of Lords debates

You could employ Andrew Dillon, CEO of NICE for 3 months.  He gets £126,000 a year.  Source: Cabinet Office via The Guardian.

Tags: andrew dillon, liver cancer, nexavar, Secondary Cancer