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

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 …