Professors call for review of way cancer drugs in NHS are rationed

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1450

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Zosia Kmietowicz

¹London

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has defended the way it decides which drugs should be funded by the NHS in England, after a group of 26 eminent oncologists from England and Scotland criticised its methods. They called for “a radical change in how the NHS makes rationing decisions for cancer.”

In a letter to the Sunday Times on 24 August (www.timesonline.co.uk, “Cancer drugs due a review”) the oncologists, headed by Karol Sikora, professor of cancer medicine at Imperial College London, called on NICE to get its “sums right.”

They were …