NHS denied me cutting edge cancer treatment
As writer AA Gill dies at 62, his poignant final article reveals:
RESTAURANT critic AA Gill was refused potentially lifeprolonging cancer treatment on the NHS, he revealed in his last published article before his death.
The writer died aged 62 at the weekend, three weeks after disclosing that he had the ‘full English’ of cancers.
In his poignant final article, he recounted how he was told of a new type of treatment that might have extended his life after he was diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to several parts of his body.
His oncologist told him that immunotherapy, which works by teaching the body’s immune system to attack cancerous cells, was the ‘biggest breakthrough in cancer treatment for decades’ – but the drug Gill needed was not routinely available on the NHS.
The consultant told the writer, whose full name was Adrian Anthony Gill: ‘It’s better for some growths than others, but it’s particularly successful with yours.
‘If you were in Germany or Scandinavia or Japan or America, or with the right insurance here, this is what you would be treated with.’
The doctor then looked at his part-
‘More life – but only if you can pay’
ner of 23 years Nicola Formby, to whom Gill proposed after his diagnosis, and said: ‘You remember asking if the treatment Adrian got on the NHS would be any different from being a private patient? Well, this is the difference.
‘If he had insurance, I’d put him on immunotherapy – specifically nivolumab. As would every oncologist in the First World. But I can’t do it on the national health.’
Gill wrote that nivolumab costs around £60,000 to £100,000 a year for a lung cancer patient – about four times the cost of chemotherapy – and is not considered cost-effective by the health rationing watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
The father of four said: ‘As yet, immunotherapy isn’t a cure, it’s a stretch more life, a considerable bit of life. More life with your kids, more life with your friends, more life holding hands, more life shared, more life spent on Earth – but only if you can pay.’
He added: ‘What NICE doesn’t say about the odds is that immunotherapy mostly works for old men who are partially responsible for their cancers because they smoked. Thousands of patients could benefit.
‘But old men who think they’re going to die anyway aren’t very effective activists. They don’t get the public or press pressure that young mothers’ cancers and kids’ diseases get.’ In his article for the Sunday Times Magazine yesterday, Gill, who gave up smoking 15 years ago, described how he underwent chemotherapy at Charing Cross Hospital in London but it did not work.
When he asked ‘What next?’, he was told: ‘Well, on the NHS we can give you another round of chemo, a bit rougher with slighter outcomes… but there is really only one treatment for you: Nivolumab.’
When a nurse he knew from his chemotherapy saw him later that day sitting in bed in the cancer ward and he told her it had not worked, he described how her shoulders sagged, she put a hand to her head and said: ‘That’s dreadful.’ Gill added: ‘I think she might be crying. I look away, so might I.’
The writer, who lived in Fulham, south-west London, and was married to current Home Secretary Amber Rudd during
‘Thousands could benefit’
the 1990s, had previously said when he revealed his illness that he chose to be treated on the NHS rather than privately because he wanted ‘the connection it brings’.
The Sunday Times reported at the time of his earlier article that doctors at Charing Cross Hospital, where he died on Saturday, planned to ‘try a new experimental drug’ as part of his treatment.
In his final article yesterday he said ‘the NHS represents everything we think is best about us’.
It ended with a footnote saying: ‘Since AA Gill wrote this article, he has started taking nivolumab.’
It was not clear if he had paid for the treatment privately, if he had got access to a clinical trial, or if the hospital trust had decided to pay for it in his final days.