A doubling of new HIV infections in the UK in the past decade is leading experts to tell GPs to offer testing to all adult male patients in some areas.
The Health Protection Agency data shows new UK-acquired cases rose from just under 2,000 in 2001 to nearly 3,800 in 2010.

Many of these new cases are among men who have sex with men and it is this group that campaigners hope to target.

The National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) has launched new guidelines for doctors in England.

NICE says GPs should now offer and recommend HIV testing to all men who register with a practice in an area with a large community of men who have sex with men or an area that has a high prevalence of HIV – meaning more than two diagnosed cases per 1,000 people.

Increased testing should help stop the spread of HIV by identifying men at risk, NICE believes.

Men who have sex with men remain the group most at risk of becoming infected with HIV.

New diagnoses in this group alone have increased by 70% in the past 10 years.

There are more than 30,000 men who have sex with men living with HIV in the UK and experts estimate nearly a third of these are currently undiagnosed and unaware that they are infected.

Another high-risk group that would benefit from increased HIV testing, according to NICE, is the black African community living in England.

In 2009, more than 2,000 black Africans were diagnosed with an HIV infection, one-third of all new diagnoses in the UK.

Some of the Primary Care Trusts in England where HIV prevalence greatly exceeds two per 1,000

* Brighton And Hove City PCT
* Camden PCT
* City And Hackney Teaching PCT
* Hammersmith And Fulham PCT
* Islington PCT
* Lambeth PCT
* Newham PCT
* Manchester Teaching PCT
* Southwark PCT

Professor Mike Kelly from NICE said: “HIV is still a serious problem in this country, with a large proportion of people unaware they are infected.

“This new guidance from NICE makes a number of practical recommendations which aim to increase HIV testing by encouraging healthcare professionals to offer it routinely to people in areas where there are a high number of people living with HIV.”

This would include parts of large cities like London and Manchester, as well as areas like Brighton and Hove.

Dr Valerie Delpech, head of HIV surveillance at the HPA, said: “These expanded HIV testing policies should be prioritised for implementation as soon as possible.

“The impact of late diagnosis is clearly demonstrated when you look at deaths among people with HIV – three out of five of HIV-positive individuals that die are diagnosed too late to gain the most health benefits from their treatment, like increased life expectancy.”

HIV charities said the guidelines were a “vital step forward”.

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12817564

It is looking increasingly likely that PharmaMar’s Yondelis will not be available on the National Health Service for patients with ovarian cancer, after cost regulators again rejected the drug on questions over efficacy.
The National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) has republished draft guidance turning down the use of Yondelis (trabectedin), in combination with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLDH), as a treatment for ovarian cancer that has returned six months or more after initial treatment with chemotherapy, including platinum for platinum-sensitive disease.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women in the UK, with more than 6,500 patients diagnosed every year.

In around 80% of cases the cancer will return following first-line treatment, and it is estimated that just over two fifths of these could be eligible for treatment with Yondelis, a marine-based anticancer drug derived from the sea-squirt that attacks cancer cell DNA to prevent cell growth and spread.

But the Institute’s Appraisal Committee said it has serious concerns over how Yondelis’ effectiveness compares to that of other treatments available on the NHS. Crucially, PharmaMar did not submit any evidence comparing its drug to platinum-based chemotherapy regimens in treating relapsed disease, despite the latter being the gold standard therapy in such cases.

“This means that we cannot be sure that [Yondelis] extends patients’ lives for longer than the most routinely used treatments,” explained NICE chief executive Andrew Dillon.

Evidence ‘not robust’

New evidence considered did suggest that Yondelis might be most effective in women with ‘partially platinum-sensitive’ ovarian cancer, i.e. when the disease comes back between six and 12 months after initial platinum chemotherapy.

However, the Committee said it was not sure that the effectiveness of the drug in this subset of patients was “genuinely different from that seen in the wider group of patients for which the drug is licensed”, and so concluded that the data were not robust enough.

Taking all the uncertainties into account, the Committee calculated that the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) for Yondelis could be higher than £95,000 per QALY gained for the entire eligible population, and £68,000 for the partially platinum-sensitive subgroup, despite a proposed patient access scheme under which PharmaMar offered to pick up the tag for treatment with its drug following the fifth cycle of treatment.

“Even when taking into consideration the Patient Access Scheme, through which the manufacturer limited the total cost of the drug, the committee concluded that the cost of trabectedin was too high relative to the uncertain benefits it may provide patients,” Dillon said.

Meanwhile, the Institute has announced that Sir Professor Sir Michael Rawlins has been reappointed as its chair for another year’s term, until March 31, 2012.

Professor Rawlins has held the position since NICE was created by the then Labour government in 1999 to curb the NHS’s expenditure on drugs.

From: http://www.pharmatimes.com/Another_NICE_no_for_PharmaMar_s_Yondelis

Dying cancer patients have been refused costly life extending drugs on cost grounds despite a Government promise to end the “scandal” forever.
Their requests have been rejected by regional health authorities who were accused of operating covert “blacklists” to restrict dozens of treatments to save money.

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than 80 cases in which desperately sick NHS patients have been refused the cancer drugs their doctor sought, in the four months since a £200 million fund was introduced to stop health authorities rationing treatments.

The fund was a key move by the Coalition so that those suffering from cancer would never again be refused drugs on grounds of cost.

Ministers were responding to years of anger over a system which meant patients were unable to secure life-extending drugs because central NHS rationers had decided the treatments were not “cost effective”.

Announcing the fund last summer, Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, promised to end “the scandal” of cancer patients being refused the drugs that their doctors sought, because of restrictions by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

A £50 million stopgap version of the fund was launched in October, before the annual £200 million investment starts in April.

But this newspaper’s investigation has raised serious concerns over its operation, including:
* At least 86 cases involving terminally-ill patients being turned down;
* Extreme variations in access to drugs, with one NHS region promising free access to more than three times as many cancer treatments as another;
* Local policies so restrictive that in many parts of the country, consultants are expected not to even bother asking for drugs which are not on the “priority lists”.

In its first four months, the fund has paid for approximately 1,300 patients’ drugs – even though research last March suggested up to 20,000 cancer patients’ lives were being shortened each year by drugs rationing.

The Government has allowed each NHS regional health authority to set its own rules about which drugs are put on priority lists, creating a postcode lottery across the country.

If treatments are not on the list, patients and their doctors have to fight harder to justify why they should get them.

Bureaucrats have created complex structures, leaving terminally-ill patients to spend their last months fighting for drugs which could increase their survival.

The policies say every possible funding route for drugs must be exhausted before the NHS will even consider dipping into the fund.

Cancer charities warned that some NHS authorities were attempting to “drive a coach and horses” through the Government pledge.

They fear the £50 million fund may actually end the financial year underspent because of the restrictions.

Andrew Wilson, chief executive of charity The Rarer Cancers Foundation, said: “We are deeply concerned that health authorities are creating really restrictive policies which go entirely against the spirit of the fund – which was that clinicians would be able to decide what treatment their patients need.

“Some organisations are effectively operating blacklists of drugs, while others are making every patient go through lengthy bureaucracy to apply as an exceptional case, when in fact they are a cancer patient requiring treatment should be sufficient. The way some of these organisations are operating drives a coach and horses through the principle of the scheme.”

In most parts of the country, if a patient requires a treatment such as Avastin for bowel cancer – which NICE says is too expensive – their doctors must first apply to see if their primary care trust will fund it as an “exceptional case”.

If that is refused, as would normally be the case, a separate application is then made to request authorisation from the cancer drugs fund – and if that too is refused, patients and doctors are left to attempt an appeal.

Patients refused include those seeking Avastin for advanced bowel, breast and brain cancer, Tyverb for breast cancer and drugs to treat tumours of the bladder and kidney.

NHS authorities said they had turned down requests because they did not think there was enough evidence patients would benefit from drugs their doctors sought. In other cases, they were refused help because their medical history did not match the precise criteria drawn up by trusts.

There is also concern over the “postcode lottery” in availability of drugs.

NHS North West has cited 22 drugs which should normally be funded – while NHS South Central, spanning five counties from Oxfordshire to the Isle of Wight, lists just six treatments which would automatically be allowed.

The policies are so restrictive that in Yorkshire and the Humber, just 82 patients have been given funding. Yet across the East of England, with a similar population, 201 cases were funded.

Even those areas which seemed to have the most generous policies have tightened their belts as end of financial year approaches.

In the North West, which had backed the use for Avastin for some advanced breast cancers, and Glivec for cancer of the stomach, says patients who have not been given funding will now have to wait until April before their cases are even considered.

Several have changed their rules even in during the four months since the fund was set up, so that several patients in London were denied drugs under one set of criteria, only to have their cases reconsidered all over again as their health declined.

Mike Hobday, head of policy at charity Macmillan Cancer Support, said he was “very worried” by the findings of the investigation.

He said: “Every cancer patient should get the drugs their doctor recommends, regardless of what type of cancer they have, or where they live.

“A few extra months towards the end of a patient’s life can mean the difference between seeing a child get married or graduate.”

Health Minister Anne Milton said: “Since October, more and more patients are being treated with life-extending drugs that they wouldn’t have got under the previous system. Demand for the fund will vary across the country; we set up the fund in order to balance out existing variation in access.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Cancer-sufferers-refused-life-extending-drugs-despite-Government-pledge

Men with prostate cancer are five times more likely to die in some parts of the country than others, highlighting a “postcode lottery” in NHS care, campaigners claim.Experts warned that inequalities in care across the country were “getting worse”.

The disease is one of the most common forms of cancer in men. About 35,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in Britain every year and about 10,000 die from the disease.

Figures show that men diagnosed with the condition in south east Cambridgeshire are almost five times less likely to die from the disease than those in Tottenham, north London.

The statistics, collated by the Prostate Cancer Charter for Action, also show that 96 of England’s 529 parliamentary constituencies have a death rate 25 per cent higher than the England average.

The figures show that in Tottenham, 57 men per 100,000 died from the disease, 131 per cent higher than the national average.

In south east Cambridgeshire the figure was 12 per 100,000.

An earlier report found that areas of the country which had failed to implement NHS guidelines on improving care had a mortality rate 4 per cent higher than those areas were the guidance had been taken up.

Dr Frank Chinegwundoh, a consultant urologist, said: “It is not enough that prostate cancer services are improving as a whole, if patients face such a lottery in the care they receive.”

“We need better services for all patients across the country, not just a lucky few.”

David Smith, of the Prostate Cancer Support Federation, said: “All men with prostate cancer should benefit from better services, yet these figures suggest that the inequalities in prostate cancer are getting worse.

“There can be no excuse for services in some areas of the country to be performing so much worse than in others.

“This situation cannot be allowed to continue.”

Mark Simmonds, the Tory shadow health minister, said: “We have been warning for some time about the inequalities in access to treatment for cancer.

“We want an NHS focused around the needs or patients and the outcomes they want to see.

“And the way funding is allocated to local NHS organisations needs to reflect the burden of disease across the country better.”

Professor Mike Richards, the NHS’s national clinical director for cancer, said: “The Department of Health recognises the importance of implementing the Improving Outcomes Guidance published by NICE and we have asked Strategic Health Authorities to submit action plans to demonstrate how they will implement this.

“Raising the public awareness of prostate cancer is one of the key challenges for the future. We want men to know what their prostate is, what it does, and what can go wrong with it and we are tackling this through the National Awareness and Early Detection Initiative.

“Also for the first time, as a result of the work of the Prostate Cancer Advisory Group, we now have a definitive set of consistent key messages for the general public about the prostate, including prostate cancer. These clear messages provide men and their families with information about the prostate that they need to be aware of and are designed in such a way as not to cause unnecessary anxiety.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5531954/Postcode-lottery-in-protate-cancer-treatment.html

The Amercians have a phrase for their version of NICE- the death panel. Now at last the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) is to lose its power to decide which drugs are too expensive. The government’s drug rationing body, Nice, is to be stripped of its power to turn down new medicines for use in the NHS, ending emotive battles with patient groups but raising the spectre of a postcode lottery for care.

The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, believes that Nice should continue to write guidelines for doctors on the best treatments for their patients, but the Guardian understands he will remove its controversial power to ban the use of drugs it considers too expensive for the benefit they offer.

The move will be greeted with enthusiasm by the pharmaceutical industry, which has opposed Nice from the outset, and by certain patient groups, set up to lobby on specific diseases, sometimes with pharma funding, that have joined cause with them in angry denunciations of Nice when drugs found to have limited benefit have been rejected.

But the decision is likely to cause consternation among the supporters of Nice, who warn of a return to the “postcode lottery” days before Nice came into being, when some patients could get the drugs they wanted on the NHS but others could not.

Critics also point out that careful scrutiny of the cost-effectiveness of drugs is essential to keep drug bills down and ensure that NHS money is not spent on medicines with very limited effect – to the detriment of other patients who may not get the care they need.

“Real growth in the NHS will be about 0.5% in the next few years,” said Alan Maynard, a health economist. “We’re going to have rationing. The question is whether we have it at a national level or let 150 primary care trusts or whatever do it their own way.”

David Cameron’s announcement of a £200m fund for new cancer drugs, made during the election, “drove a coach and horses through Nice”, said Maynard. He said he thought Nice was “under considerable assault”.

Lansley wants the decision on whether a patient should get a drug to be moved back to the patient’s doctor. The local commissioning body will be asked to agree to pay for it. The cost of the drug will be decided through a new “value-based pricing” system.

The NHS will negotiate with the manufacturer on a price for each new drug, taking into account not only how clinically effective it is and how it reduces the burden on the patient’s carers but also what other treatments are available and how “innovative” the company has been in producing the drug.

The health secretary told the Guardian that reforming the way medicines were paid for would help ensure money was spent wisely.

“We need a system that encourages the development of breakthrough drugs addressing areas of significant unmet need. And we need a much closer link between the price the NHS pays and the value that a new medicine delivers, sending a powerful signal about the areas that the pharmaceutical industry should target for development,” he said.

“Most importantly, using our cancer drugs fund in the interim, and value-based pricing for the longer-term, we will move to an NHS where patients will be confident that where their clinicians believe a particular drug is the right and most effective one for them, then the NHS will be able to provide it for them.”

The pharmaceutical and biotech industries have heavily lobbied governments for a long time, arguing that Nice is an obstacle to innovation, delaying the introduction of their new drugs into the NHS and sometimes turning them down or restricting the numbers of patients for whom they can be used. Under the new system, they will be able to argue for a premium price for a drug in a new class, for instance, or for one that has required a greater outlay for research and development.

According to the pharmaceutical press, health minister Lord Howe told a conference last week on the future of innovation and drug research and development that Nice was now “somewhat redundant” when it came to deciding the cost-effectiveness of drugs, although its role in producing guidance would remain very important. Howe said the price to be paid would reflect “everyone’s agreed perspective” on its value.

Dr Richard Barker, director general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said he thought it was right that Nice should no longer be able to accept or reject a drug for the NHS. “It should be a clinical decision on what medicine a patient needs, informed by a broader sense of value than the current one that Nice applies,” he said.

He envisaged that Nice would continue to look at the effectiveness of a medicine and give advice, but then the drug manufacturer would meet with the NHS to discuss the price. “We believe a more productive way forward based on some kind of broad assessment of value is for the company to sit down and discuss the outcome of that with the department of health and the NHS, rather than have another body set up. We don’t think there is a disagreement between us [the industry and the government],” he said.

Value-based pricing would replace the current complicated system known as the PPRS (pharmaceutical price regulation scheme), which reimburses companies for the drugs they supply to the NHS. The industry has defended the PPRS in the past, but Barker said he thought it would support the new system – as long as existing barriers were swept away.

At the moment, there are some regional bodies assessing the usefulness of medicines and PCTs have pharmacy advisers and formularies – lists of drugs they are willing to buy – which the industry hopes will all go.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/nice-to-lose-new-drug-power

The National Health Service (NHS) is the only major area of Whitehall spending in which there will be a rise in real terms. However, an increase of just 0.1 per cent a year will be dwarfed by the rise in the cost of drugs, an ageing population, the cost of reorganisations and inflation.

The cuts:
Technically the NHS has been given an increase in funding but this is less than half a per cent over four years.

£1bn will be diverted from the NHS to social care to help cut emergency readmissions to hospitals.

Psychological therapies will be boosted for those with mental health problems.

A new cancer drug fund for medicines that have been turned down by Nice worth up to £200m a year.

Three new hospitals were given the go ahead including Epsom and St Helier, West Cumberland and the Royal Oldham.

However the extension of free prescriptions to people with long-term conditions will be stalled.

One to one nursing care for cancer patients and a pledge under the previous government to have cancer tests conducted within one week will also be postponed.

The number of quangos will be cut from 18 to 10 by 2014 and the administration costs will be reduced by a third.

Radiographers will examine some x-rays as well as take them in order to save £7.9m of consultant radiologists’ time.

What it means:

Although an increase in funding sounds generous compared to the other departments it is nowhere near enough to keep pace with inflation in the NHS or the increase in demand for healthcare as the population ages and new treatments are developed.

The NHS has already been planning to make £20bn worth of savings over the next four years and it is not yet clear if this will have to be increased in light of the CSR settlement.

The Chancellor said the NHS spent £102bn this year but this is £5bn lower than what was planned for in the 2007 spending round, raising the question of where that money has gone.

Thousands of jobs in the NHS are already earmarked for cuts as primary care trusts and strategic health authorities are to be abolished as part of the coalition’s reforms and it is feared that some hospitals may seek to cut frontline jobs as well.

Experts have warned that plans to give GPs greater control over the NHS budget and the reorganisation this will take will cost between £2bn and £3bn.

What is the department’s budget?

£109.4bn

How well does the department perform?

Waiting times for patients needing treatment in hospital reduced dramatically under Labour, following the introduction of many targets. But with them came an expanding bureaucracy. The number of managers rose by 84 per cent in a decade, while nurse numbers grew by just 24 per cent.

Recent scandals such as that at Stafford Hospital, where patients suffered appalling and basic failings, illustrated the dangers of prioritising finances and targets over care.

Britain’s record in funding drugs for many serious diseases – especially cancer – compares poorly with the rest of Europe, and survival rates are worse than in other countries.

While growth in spending on the NHS in the past decade was at a record level, most of the money went on pay. GP pay rose by nearly 50 per cent in a decade, to an average of £106,000.

Had any savings already been identified?

The Government says more than £1 billion will be saved by halving the size of NHS bureaucracy in four years. 150 primary care trusts and 10 health authorities will be scrapped. However, redundancy payouts to get rid of so many managers will be expensive. Quangos such as the Health Protection Agency will be culled. Funding for a £75 million public campaign against obesity and drinking is to be stopped, with food and drinks companies asked to foot the bill.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Spending-Review-What-it-means-for-the-National-Health-Service-NHS-Department-of-Health

Hundreds of thousands of patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease could get drug treatments following a U turn by the killer quango NICE.
Having banned the use of Alzheimers drugs for several years the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE), now says the evidence backs the use of drugs for “mild” symptoms.

Current rules prevent NHS doctors prescribing donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine in such early cases.

Campaigners said the release of the new draft guidance was a “momentous day”.

As many as 465,000 people in the UK have Alzheimer’s disease, and this is expected to rise as the population ages.

The availability of drugs for the condition on the NHS has been source of controversy for almost a decade.

While there has always been evidence they diminished the symptoms and boosted quality of life for some, it has not always been clear exactly how much improvement they could deliver, to which groups of patients, and for how long.

In 2005, killer quango drugs watchdog NICE ruled that no-one should get the drugs on the NHS, then conceded a year later that patients with “moderate” disease should receive them, while still ruling out “mild” patients.

The secret formula used by NICE to calculate how much “value for money” the drugs offer to the NHS was then the subject of a court action by the Alzheimer’s Society and pharmaceutical companies.

* 2005 Draft NICE guidance recommends no patients should receive Aricept (donepezil), Reminyl (galantamine) or Exelon (rivastigmine)
* May 2006 Final guidance says those with moderate Alzheimer’s are eligible, but not those with mild disease
* October 2006 Internal NICE panel rejects appeals over decision to exclude “mild” patients
* June 2007 High Court backs NICE decision following Judicial Review
* May 2008 Court of Appeal rules NICE should make public their “economic model” which calculates the financial benefits of a drug
* June 2009 NICE admits “technical inaccuracies” in the model, amends it, but does not alter guidance
* October 2010 Five years on, a fresh review of the guidance backs prescribing three drugs for mild Alzheimer’s, and includes a fourth for more advanced disease

After the case went all the way to the House of Lords, NICE was forced to first disclose the formula, then amend it after admitting “technical inaccuracies”, although it said this did not change the outcome.

That new review now proposes giving the drugs to patients with mild symptoms – which covers people in the early stages of the disease, perhaps suffering memory loss and confusion, but not yet dependent on carers for day-to-day activities.

It has also suggested a fourth drug, Ebixa, be made available for the first time to patients with more advanced disease.

The guidance is still subject to appeal by the quango.

Ruth Sutherland, the interim chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, said that it was “a momentous day”, with approximately half of the 62,000 people who develop the disease every year likely to benefit from the drugs.

She said that the drugs, which cost approximately £2.80 per person per day, were not a “miracle cure”, but made important differences to people’s lives.

She said: “For the price of a cup of coffee they can mean the difference between recognising your loved ones and playing with your grandchildren.

“It is critical that this draft decision becomes a reality and that all people with Alzheimer’s are given the opportunity to benefit.”

The society’s Director of Research, Professor Clive Ballard, said: “If this guidance is issued, doctors will no longer have to watch people deteriorate without being able to treat them.”

Professor Roy Jones, from the Research Institute for the Care of Older People in Bath, described the decision as “an important milestone”.

He said: “Early diagnosis and access to medication is critical to help reduce both the short and long-term impact of this devastating condition on patients, families and carers.”

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11486367

NICE the killer quango wants to waste taxpayers money by suggesting that the NHS should bribe fat people to lose weight and smokers to quit, and give children toys for eating their fruit and vegetables.The Killer Quango- the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (NICE) was set up in early 1999 by the labour Secretary of State for Health Frank Dobson and has since condemned hundreds of cancer sufferers to early deaths and blighted thousands to painful existences by restricting payments- creating postcode lotteries for health care.

Now during the credit crunch nice want to waste millions of taxpayers pounds bribing people when earlier pilot studies showed that there were high drop out rates and up to 80% failed to reach their targets.

The advice, which will be published by the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure, has been greeted with anger by critics who claimed such “bribes” were draining the public purse of money which could be better spent elsewhere.

The study examined a series of schemes, including one in Kent which pays dieters up to £425 for losing weight and another in Scotland which gives pregnant women shopping vouchers worth up to £650 for quitting the habit.

It also looked at programmes in Oxford, Manchester, London and Bangor in Wales, where schools have been given toys such as juggling balls, stickers and pencils to children who have eaten their fruit and vegetables.

Fiona McEvoy, from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said state funds should not be used to pay people to change their lifestyles,

She said: “Bribing people to lose weight or quit smoking is nothing but a quick fix which patronises the individuals in question and drains much-needed money away from the public purse. At a time when cancer drugs are being denied to sufferers due to lack of funds, many will be disgusted to learn that NICE are considering such a costly approach.”

Other schemes examined in the report include a pilot in Manchester which rewards overweight parents for walking their children to school.

As part of a £30m project, supermarket points are given to unfit people who attend keep-fit classes, weight loss clubs or go for a run in the park.

Overweight people gain credit points they can cash in for groceries just for turning up, with extra rewards depending on how much weight they lose.

In Newcastle, Bristol, Torbay, Manchester and Bury St Edmunds, those aged 16 to 22 are given subsidised gym membership if they visit at least once a week.

However, the report found limited evidence about whether the schemes make a difference.

In the Scottish antismoking project, for instance, the study acknowledged that four fifths of the women in the £43,000 scheme were smoking again within three months of giving birth.

The recommendations from NICE’s independent citizens council do not constitute its official advice to the NHS. Its board will launch a public consultation on the matter before considering the paper, which would inform future guidance.

However, the rationing body has already supported financial rewards for heroin addicts.

Originally NICE recommended that addicts who attended treatment programmes should be given the chance to win prizes, such as televisions and MP3 players.

The body dropped the idea following a public outcry but instead recommended that shopping vouchers worth up to £10 could be awarded to those who completed programmes, or showed they were clear of drugs.

NICE has been widely criticised for refusing to pay for dozens of cancer drugs on the grounds of cost. Medicines rejected include the drugs Avastin for advanced bowel cancer and Nexavar for advanced liver cancer.

Last year the institute fuelled controversy when it ruled marriage guidance counselling should be funded by the NHS, and supported the use of acupuncture for back pain, despite finding there was no good evidence it worked.

The report follows a three day meeting of NICE’s citizens council, where members were asked to vote about the use of incentives.

“More than 60 per cent said they were in favour of such schemes, as long as they were only used as a “last resort” and were not exchangeable for tobacco or alcohol.

Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman of NICE said: “We clearly face several public health challenges in today’s society, some more obvious than others, and we must seek to improve these in ways that are likely to achieve the best outcomes to those affected.

“The majority of the council has voted in favour of the use of incentives under certain circumstances, but this clearly remains a divisive issue”.

Public consultation on the report starts today.

From:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NICE killer quango taxpayers-bribes-for-obese-and-smokers.html

Health Direct finds this new waste of taxpayers money a disgrace. Research in pilot studies has clearly showed that bribing people to lose weight and stop smoking DOES NOT WORK in the vast majority of cases.

On June 10, 2010 Health Direct published research :Nanny state cash bribes for good health fail three quarters of patients at http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2010/06/nanny-state-cash-bribes-for-good-health-fail-three-quarters-of-patients.html

A Department of Health spokesman has already described them as an undesirable use of money and should only be adopted as a “last resort”.

If you would like to tell the killer quango NICE what you think of this scheme, comments should be sent to Clifford Middleton, Research and Development Project Manager at clifford.middleton@nice.org.uk by 5pm on Friday, 26 November 2010.

If email is a problem for you, please send your comments in a letter to Clifford Middleton at:

NICE,
MidCity Place,
71 High Holborn,
London WC1V 6NA.

The number of 11 and 12-year-old girls prescribed the pill by a family doctor has soared five fold in the past decade, according to new figures.
More than 1,000 girls in the first year of secondary school have been given prescriptions for the pill, according to figures from GPs, while a further 200 have long-term injectable or implanted contraceptive devices.

The disclosure prompted warnings that Britain was “facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an every younger age”.

It follows the publication of guidance by the nanny state’s National Institute for Curbing Expenditue (NICE)  that sex education should be introduced from the age of five.

Trevor Stammers, chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship and a GP in south London, told The Sunday Times: “If sex education is introduced in primary schools in the way being proposed, we will see many more 11-year-old girls seeking contraception without pointing out the risks…. We are going to make matters worse.”

He added: “These figures illustrate the fact that the UK is facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an ever younger age.”

The latest figures came from the General Practice Research Database, which collects information on medical records from 500 GP practices.

The data also shows that at least 58,000 15-year-olds were on the pill last year – more than double the number in 1999.

By law, doctors are bound by a duty of confidentiality towards children – even if they are under the legal age of consent – unless they suspect abuse.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Huge-rise-in-11-year-olds-on-the-pill

The only scientist in the House of Commons has called for all MPs to be required to take a crash course in basic scientific techniques.
Julian Huppert, a research biochemist who became the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge at the last election, said he was alarmed at the lack of scientific knowledge among colleagues.

In an interview with The Independent, he also accused political leaders of paying “lip service” to the importance of scientific proof and warned that looming cuts to university research budgets could provoke a “brain drain” from Britain.

Although there are other backbenchers with scientific backgrounds, Dr Huppert is the sole MP to have practised past PhD level, specialising most recently on DNA structures.

He said it was a real concern that the Commons – which is full of career politicians, lawyers and economists – lacked scientific expertise. Dr Huppert, a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, argued that all MPs should be obliged to take a short science training course, covering areas such as how research is conducted, numeracy and the use of statistics.

“It would be really important for all MPs to have some exposure, because some of them will not have studied any science since they were 15 and it’s important to understand how to engage with it,” he said. “You would then have a lot of MPs who were able to understand the information they were being presented with.”

Accusing some MPs of being “anti-science”, he said: “They have a set of beliefs and they will argue that regardless of the science.”

Dr Huppert said political leaders tended to come up with a stance and then tried to make the evidence fit it, rather than being driven by the science. He cited the previous government’s decision to make the drug mephedrone a banned substance after claims about the role it played in the deaths of several young people.

“What we saw was a policy based on media reports, rather than based on evidence, and that does happen too much, ” he said. “As a researcher I will come up with a hypothesis, which I may talk about to people, I’ll then do some experiments and test it and will then change my hypothesis based on what I find. If you do that in politics, that’s a U-turn and a defeat.”

Although he absolved the Science minister, David Willetts, from criticism, he said a “tricky” relationship had developed between MPs and scientists. “Generally, they are two separate camps who do not communicate,” he said.

Dr Huppert gained a seat on Cambridgeshire County Council when he was 22 – the same age at which he gained his PhD. He pursued the two careers in parallel until the election in May, when he succeeded fellow Liberal Democrat David Howarth, who stood down as the MP for Cambridge to return to academia.

Dr Huppert said: “Science in some senses is what I am good at, but politics is what I care about.” He also hit out at suggestions that university research budgets could fall victim to the public spending squeeze being undertaken by the Government.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/only-scientist-in-commons-alarmed-at-mps-ignorance