NICE (The national institute of health and care excellence) was set up to “provide independent and evidence-based guidance on the most effective ways to prevent, diagnose and treat disease and ill health reducing inequalities and variation”
But in the views of the signatories of the letter they’re clearly not following their purpose with Inclisiran. Is it because of the influence of a Bad Pharma friendly government leaning on NICE? In 2015 an investigation by the investigations editor of the BMJ, Deborah Cohen, revealed that there was ministerial encouragement on Nice committees to be more favourable to the drug and device industries. 71 coalition MPs had been linked to health firms set to profit from opening up more of the market within the NHS. I wrote about this in the Observer newspaper at the time. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/nhs-drugs-companies-wasting-money-trials-nice
This is an extremely worrying situation for the health of the population and an NHS that is already broken if we have health policy that is putting the interests of the drug industry ahead of patients. Until hard outcome data is available on the drug benefits and potential harms I will certainly not be encouraging any patient to take this drug and I would ask other doctors to do the same in keeping with the principles of ethical evidence based medical practice.
The letter was covered as an exclusive on GB News. You can watch the full, no holds barred, interview here and the official response from NICE and make your own mind up. It also includes the views of brilliant GP and cholesterol expert Dr Malcolm Kendrick.
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