Lord Saatchi’s proposed new legislation aims to encourage responsible innovation in medical treatment.
His campaign for the Medical Innovation Bill carries a very personal tinge. He lost his wife Josephine Hart to ovarian cancer in 2011, describing her death as a “wasted death”.
“All 160,000 cancer deaths in this country every year are wasted deaths because science advances not one centimetre as a result of them”, he said.
Lord Saatchi wants to stimulate medical innovation by giving patients the chance to try treatments that fall outside of ‘standard practice’.
This will apply to:
- Patient who are not responding to conventional treatments
- Patients who give their consent to such innovation
- New treatments that are still at an experimental stage
- New treatments that hold out a real prospect of being able to help both the patient and others in similar circumstances who come after them
Criticism of the Medical Innovation Bill
However, the proposed Bill has been the subject of widespread criticism.
Most notably, opponents have questioned Lord Saatchi’s claim that medical innovation is being thwarted by the fear of litigation.
There is no empirical evidence to support this argument, and in actual fact clinical negligence claims help to improve practice, preventing others suffering the same fate.
As Eric Watts, medical adviser to the Conference of Cancer Self Help Groups, says:
“Lord Saatchi is wrong and the law is not killing patients. Lord Saatchi’s examples of law preventing progress are ill chosen. He gives examples of deviation from standard procedures which represent genuine negligence.”
The Society of Clinical Injury Lawyers (SCIL) suggests a better approach would be to concentrate on raising standards, and in this way reduce the prospect of litigation.
Additionally, the Bill uses an emotive story to garner support for medical innovation, but in reality it fails to address the most important needs in cancer medicine.
According to Eric Watts, this includes the need “to increase research funding in tumour biology, to work with the pharmaceutical industry to promote more cost effective treatments and to help patients living with cancer.”
The public consultation period for the Bill ended on 25 April 2014. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has now promised to carry out a full consultation, and legislate the Bill subject to the results of the consultation.
Glynns Solicitors
If you would like to talk to a solicitor about substandard medical practice, please get in touch with us today.
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