Double standards

This is due, in part, to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence being more pragmatic when it comes to the licensing of potentially life-enhancing drugs. Since its formation at the turn of the Millennium, this body has assessed 146 new cancer treatments – and approved use of 64 per cent of applications.

Even though the cost to the NHS can be significant, these medical advances have given great comfort to cancer patients – and their loved ones – at a time of great personal trauma.

As such, the family of five-year-old Duchenne muscular dystrophy sufferer Harley Creswick, from Sheffield, presented a compelling case to Parliament yesterday when they appealed to MPs – and the wider NHS – to speed up the introduction of new treatments.

An angelic boy, his illness is so debilitating that he is likely to be wheelchair-bound by the age of 10 and may not live beyond his late 20s. Time is not on Harley’s side – or his family’s.

Yet, given that a medical breakthrough is said to be within touching distance, it would be heartbreaking if Harley, and other victims, were to be denied a new treatment – subject to NICE providing the necessary assurances – because the NHS does not afford them the same special status given to cancer patients. There is another point that also needs to be made. If victims are denied new treatment, they are likely to become even more dependent on NHS support services and this, too, has significant financial implications.