NO

A lot of these life-extending drugs and treatments can cost huge sums of money, and the NHS isn’t a bottomless pit, so it’s right that lines are drawn somewhere. NICE puts a quality-of-life calculation on this as much as a length-of-life calculation – is it worth keeping someone alive at great cost if the life they’re living is pretty dismal? Often it’s an individual decision – some don’t want never-ending hospital visits, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, they want no pain, and time to spend with their family before they die. For others, every minute extra spent alive is all they want. When I worked with NICE I was keen to explore the whole pathway of care – so in the case of pancreatic cancer, which is often picked up very late, more emphasis should be put on earlier diagnosis. We need to focus on patient outcomes rather than demand expensive drugs are thrown at a problem when that problem could be better dealt with using other approaches.