Vocal Voices

Lib Dem. I also lost 3 people very close to me who could have benefitted greatly from this bill and the research advancements it could promote.

The Lib Dem's might want to think long and hard about this. I won't even vote for them as a protest vote now or even tactically to get out a MP I don't like....

At least the Telegraph allows a defence of the position of those against the Bill in its current form.

There are genuine concerns from many in the Medical Professions and they are not presented in the rather one-sided original article.

But that was not the reason given by the Lib Dems for blocking this. Not that the concerns were too great. Remember this legislation has already been through the commons once and to the Lords. All it needed was for the commons to pass it again with the "safeguards" the lords wanted and it would be legislation.

Whilst I do understand that there are concerns in the medial community about using treatments which are not fully "human" tested, I also find that they are conservative to the point that they almost block the progress of treatments.

Of the 4 people close to me who I have lost in the last decade, one of them actually talked to the doctors about experimental drugs at my urging. Let me tell you what he told me and this is an almost direct quote.

"They are not willing to try untested drugs on cancer patients until it is almost certain that they will die. This way there is no risk to them. There is no drug on the market (at that time or now as far as I know), which can recover a patient who has gone this far. All the testing will do is show if the drug has the potential to cure others by it's impact on the malignant cancer"

That is about as direct a quote as I can give you. The person who related it to me was a professor of Physics at St Andrews University so there is no doubt he understood clearly what he was told.

As I understand this legislation, when enacted, will allow patients to make the choice to become part of a drugs testing programme. This would have a twofold effect. One that the treatment would be taken at an early enough stage to give truly meaningfull results and Two that some people might actually survive with the early intervention of these drugs.

Given that some kinds of cancer infections can be diagnosed fairly early as "non survivable", it then gives the patient a real choice. Go for the experimental treatment and hope for a cure, or, at worst, perhaps rapidly advance the development of oncology drugs which really do work. Or go with the traditional treatment and hope that they are one of the few who's body can throw the cancer off with the aid of current therapies.

That is why I'm so annoyed at the Lib Dems. They have more important things to do.... Thousands die from Cancer every year and the medical profession is bound, by law, only to help so much. Sorry but to me this is worth doing.

As to the safety factor. I have more than half a decade of experience working for Pharma companies. I'm GXP and 21 CFR Part 11 trained and I also have had to do compliance orientation courses which explain the history for the FDA rules and regulations and what they are protecting against. I agree they are not just needed but vital for our protection. However there are cases where our choices should be easier and this law would be one of them.

My view on this subject is that a person who is said to be terminally ill with cancer
should be entitled to ask for the treatment. They would have nothing to lose, and
would perhaps gain something from knowing that they were contributing to medical
knowledge, to the benefit of future individuals is similar conditions.