FYI
Editorial in the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics
Best wishes
David McDaid
LSE Health and Social Care
It's not NICE to discriminate
John Harris
J Med Ethics 2005;31 373-375
http://jme.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/extract/31/7/373?etoc
NICE must not say people are not worth treating
Abbreviations: NHS, National Health Service; NICE, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence; QALY, quality adjusted life year
Keywords: NICE; NHS; QALY; age discrimination; ageing
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has proposed that drugs for the treatment of dementia be banned to National Health Service (NHS) patients on the grounds that their cost is too high and "outside the range of cost effectiveness that might be considered appropriate for the NHS"i.1
This is despite NICE's admission that these drugs are effective in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and despite NICE having approved even more expensive treatments. The effect is that thousands of Alzheimer's patients will be denied the only treatment available. It is difficult to think of this as anything but wickedness or folly or more likely both. At the same time, and with no apparent sense of irony, NICE has launched a public consultation document3 on its guidelines on social value judgments. As we shall see these guidelines are ethically illiterate as well as . . .
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