Article Text
Abstract
The UK’s Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) was introduced in 2010 following the Conservative Party’s promise to address the fact that numerous efficacious cancer drugs were not available because of their cost ineffectiveness, as deduced by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. While, at face value, this policy appears only to promote the UK’s public welfare, a deeper analysis reveals the ethically unjustifiable inconsistencies that the CDF introduces; where is the analogous fund for other equally severe diseases? Have the patients without cancer been neglected simply due to the fear-inducing advertising and particularly ferocious speech which surrounds cancer? The CDF is unjustifiable when challenged by such questions. However, it is troubling to think that the CDF might be repealed in order to abolish these ethical concerns. Intuitively, one feels uncomfortable stripping the cancer patient of their benefits just so that they might be on an equally pessimistic footing with others. In the present essay, I argue that, although there are no ethically justifiable grounds for the CDF’s introduction, its removal would be inappropriate. Following this realisation, I investigate whether the procedural steps of the CDF itself—theoretically removed from the context of resource distribution for all disease types—represent an ethically justifiable system. I believe that the answer is yes, given the CDF’s conformity to accountability for reasonableness, a robust framework of procedural justice, which continuously improves the ethical and epistemological standards of the policies to which it is applied.
- allocation of health care resources
- public health ethics
- decision-making
- distributive justice
- ethics committees/consultation
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Developing a framework to incorporate real-world evidence in cancer drug funding decisions: the Canadian Real-world Evidence for Value of Cancer Drugs (CanREValue) collaboration
- Potential for epistemic injustice in evidence-based healthcare policy and guidance
- Justice and procedure: how does “accountability for reasonableness” result in fair limit-setting decisions?
- The ethical canary: narrow reflective equilibrium as a source of moral justification in healthcare priority-setting
- Value assessment frameworks: who is valuing the care in healthcare?
- NICE rejects trastuzumab emtansine for use on NHS
- NICE and the Cancer Drugs Fund—2020 vision?
- Cancer drugs: high price, uncertain value
- Most drugs paid for by £1.27bn Cancer Drugs Fund had no “meaningful benefit”
- How should we assess the clinical and cost effectiveness of histology independent cancer drugs?