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The UK’s ‘Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation)’ Bill received Royal assent and passed into law on 23rd March 2016, after a long and rocky journey. The Act extends to only England and Wales. Lord (Maurice) Saatchi introduced the original Medical Innovation Bill as a Private Members’ Bill following the loss of his beloved wife, Josephine Hart, from cancer in 2011. After experiencing the brutality of both the disease and the conventional treatment offered his wife first hand, he vowed to change the face of cancer, and other chronic diseases, treatment in the UK. He intended that his Bill would give doctors more prescribing freedom, and enable responsible innovation when managing cancer and other diseases. Those who value natural health have been hopeful that such a Bill would improve mainstream access to natural and integrative therapies.
Following the axing of Lord Saatchi's redrafted 2014 Bill, a new 2015 Private Members Bill was taken through Parliament by Chris Heaton-Harris, MP for Daventry. By the time it cleared the House of Lords, this had evolved into the final 2016 version which received Royal Assent. The Act requires that the innovative treatment — which is typically expected to consist of an off-label use of an existing drug — and the outcome, be entered onto a register to inform future clinical trials. It’s hard to see how this Bill has become anything other than a fast track to new drug licencing whilst using real patients as the guinea pigs. It’s certainly not what Lord Saatchi first intended.
About the new Act
The stated purpose of this Bill — now an Act of Parliament, is to, “promote access to innovative medical treatments (including treatments consisting in the off-label use of medicines or the use of unlicensed medicines)”. It provides for, “the establishment of a database of innovative medical treatments, and access to information contained in the database.”
Database of Innovative Treatments
The main difference between Saatchi’s version of the Bill and Chris Heaton-Harris’s final version passed into Law, is the provision for a database of innovative treatments, the newly named, Medical Innovation Register. The open access database is intended to record all ‘innovative’ treatments undertaken, and their outcomes, positive or negative. It will be a requirement for data to be entered into this database, providing published evidence, “so that successes and failures can be seen and shared by other doctors, scientists and researchers. This database will drive forward evidence-based, medical science”. The data will also be used to inform clinical trials and speed up the process of ‘repurposing’ drugs (using a drug for another purpose than is covered by its medical licence), which effectively prolongs the profit life of the drug. It’s intended that the database will be set up and managed by the UK’s number-crunching Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).
Medical consensus and pharma bias
We reported in 2014 that the redrafted version of the Saatchi Bill would require a doctor to consult with colleagues prior to making a decision to deviate from the standard treatment. This provision remained in the 2015 version, but was dropped in February 2016. (talk about why, and about the ways in which use of the register may be sufficient to exclude natural products, thereby leading onto the next para, which needs altering)
Since ‘innovative treatments’ are clearly intended to include untested or off-label (prescribed for different conditions from that licensed) drugs, we wonder how use of these could possibly be considered safer (and more ‘responsible’) than natural treatments. Will this be a case of safe and effective alternative treatments being frozen out by ? (medical peer pressure and pharma bias)? Instead, the new law looks set to put vulnerable patients in the undoubtedly risky and dangerous situation of becoming test subjects for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry.
Where will it lead?
Its many critics have given the Bill a rough ride since Lord Saatchi first launched his original version. Even as the watered down, seemingly watertight version passed into law, there are those who remain opposed, and the media have remained largely silent (recheck). Prior to the Royal assent, the journal of the Pharmaceutical Society wrote, “There is no evidence that it will achieve its aims and it does not have the backing of most healthcare organisations… it could lead to some doctors practising recklessly, thereby inducing harm to patients.”
As for the prospects for patients hoping this law will allow them access to innovative natural treatments? We sincerely hope to see some resilient and determined doctors attempting to jump the hurdles now enshrined in the new Medical Innovations Bill. But don’t hold your breath, courage and integrity are one thing, but this Bill requires that doctors are comfortable enough to enter their names alongside the treatment and outcome entries in the Medical Innovation Register. In our view, patients deserve better than to become pharma fodder in their darkest and most vulnerable hours.
Comments
your voice counts
31 March 2016 at 8:36 am
As usual, I smell corruption around this weakened law! It would be interesting to see any associations between the MPs introducing amendments, MPs voting for the watered down and dangerous Law and the pharma companies. This will get worse if/when TIPP is approved by the undemocratic EU.
31 March 2016 at 11:31 am
My own correspondence with the MHRA indicates a bias against herbal medicine that even breaks their own rules. In addition, they quote a temporary ban in Europe that have has been lifted, on the grounds of having been ruled both unnecessary and illegal.
When caught with its pants down and challenged with documentary evidence, the MHRA does its usual trick of refusing to respond and kicking the ball into the long grass.
With the pro pharmaceutical anti herbal bias spelt out in the HoC Select Committee Report on the Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry 2005, this comes as no surprise and it would only be expected to find corruption by vested interest prevailing yet again.
31 March 2016 at 11:47 am
IT IS TIME TO PUT THE CITIZEN FIRST.
The NHS is run by government and big Pharmaceuticals and this is NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE.
The taxpayer/patient is DENIED CHOICE OF TREATMENT.
Pharmaceuticals are synthetic, the entire research is never released so the full extent of the damage caused to the human body is an UNKNOWN, except to the researchers! The body cannot process synthetic substances hence the extensive side effects. So more drugs are administered to combat the side effects but then create more and different side effects. SO YOUR ILLNESS CREATES A LUCRATIVE INCOME STREAM FOR THE PHARMACEUTICALS. These drugs are NEVER designed to cure or ameliorate the original illness.
For all this torture you pay and you have NO SAY.
WHEN WILL THE ABUSE STOP. IF THIS WAS A SERVICE FROM A COMMERCIAL ORGANISATION YOU WOULD HAVE A RIGHT OF LEGAL REDRESS. NOT SO AGAINST YOUR GOVERNMENT AND THEY APPEAR TO FORGET ARE YOUR 'SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE' . YOU pay their salary.
WAKE UP EVERYBODY!
31 March 2016 at 7:46 pm
State control of health issues and denial of freedom to explore or integrate non-pharmacological approaches has nothing to do with science and everything to do with the corruption of the State by transnational corporate lobbies - after first subverting and corrupting scientific institutions and media.
The extension of the idea of owning and controlling our biology and environment is the logical outcome of a directed technocratic behaviourism - in which faulty and unworthy broken bio-robots - have to be manually overridden of their own will so as to farm them.
The 'elitists' are a 'power class' who have corresponding privilege, insider knowledge and protections that they are unwilling to lose - and so no real opening to change a system of maintaining division and control will be allowed - for any crack in the dam would open up more - and the loss of such control is terrifyingly unthinkable and avoided at any cost.
Anecdotally - the film "Cancer is a serious business" that documents coercion and fraud - was raised in discussion in the highest office of the USA - but was simply 'too big' to go into or open up. "Too big to fail" is the sense of tares entangling the wheat that dare not be addressed for fear the whole economy and power system as we have known it - disintegrates or 'goes down'. And of course too many vested interests will move to block or counter any reform.
Regaining our own 'inner track' of power has to begin by opening and owning our fears rather than demanding another power 'save us' from them. No one else can stop a true willingness to learn; to transform and to heal or reintegrate to a wholeness of being - but the guilted and fearfully split sense of self we are conditioned to normalize and persona-fy is not the basis for such a movement of being. Aligning in a true movement of being is different from fear-fuelled 'power' or wilfulness upon life. Listening Within is not mad! It is refusing a false-faced normalcy in hate for a clear and true perspective that can only be had by allowing it in - by receiving. And listening within will include noticing promptings and intuitive recognitions 'without' or in the ideas or people or situation we attract into our lives - because we are desirous of a truly integrated outcome - whether we are denied a fullness of cultural exchange or not.
02 April 2016 at 12:34 am
In reply to Barrie Sharrock if you vote to leave the EU in June - the TIPP will no longer relate to the UK!
As regards the Bill - hm - doubt there will be many champions (doctors) who will fight together to allow cancer + other diseases, access to "innovative" and in particular non drug therapies. The issue also remains that a patient needs to "be responsible" to recover from some of the worst maladies. Sadly some people may not be willing to invest the time and energy it takes to be well. It can be a tough road and one needs support.
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