Andrew Dillon may make unpopular decisions, but that's his job, says robert matthews |
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His £150,000 salary sounds impressive, but who would want Andrew Dillon's job? As chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), he has become a national hate-figure for routinely denying treatment to the sick and elderly.
That is how he is portrayed by the media, who have seized on his latest heartless act: refusing to give blanket access to drugs that ease the misery of Alzheimer's Disease.
According to Dillon - or, more precisely, his expert medical advisors - the scientific evidence shows these drugs aren't cost-effective enough to be made generally available on the NHS. Dillon said all this back in 2001, and triggered an outcry from medical charities, who demanded the evidence be re-examined. Five years on, another team of experts has upheld the original decision.
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| The best Dillon can do is come out with Dalek-like statements |
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But talk of cost-effectiveness and limited NHS budgets is no match for the now-inevitable spate of true-life stories of Alzheimer's victims denied access to drugs to ease their plight.
The problem facing Dillon is two-fold: first, many of the medical charities receive backing from drugs companies so they're bound to argue the case for the manufacturers; second, these charities can always find anecdotal stories to back their claims. But no one can ever point to patients and prove they were cured with money NICE didn't waste on 'wonder cures'. So the best Dillon can do is come out with Dalek-like statements about evidence-based decisions and tough choices.
Ironically, the row comes just as another dispute has broken out, over attempts to make school science lessons more 'relevant'. Some insist this is another example of dumbing down. Yet surely the standard of debate over new drugs would benefit from a wider appreciation of the very 'relevant' scientific maxim that the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. 
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 12, 2006
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