NHS: Association of Medical Research Charities Report

Lord Saatchi Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Saatchi]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the AMRC on the report and the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, on bringing it to our attention. I share with the noble Lord the view that grief is not a disqualification from rational thought. I particularly congratulate Sharmila Nebhrajani, the chief executive of the AMRC. Reading this report, she reminds me of Adlai Stevenson’s striking description of President Kennedy: an idealist without illusions.

She is certainly a realist to say that,

“we still have quite a way to go if we are to get close to the government’s goal of every clinician a researcher and every willing patient a research participant”.

In saying that, the AMRC is reflecting the Prime Minister’s speech on life science in December 2011. He speaks about 34 Nobel prizes in medicine in the context of the global race in which, he says,

“we must ensure that the UK stays ahead … to keep pace with what’s happening we’ve got to change quite radically … the way we innovate”.

As has been said, the Prime Minister sees the NHS as an amazing asset to innovation because it has,

“a huge wealth of information all consented to, all anonymous—and that is helping them find new answers”.

The Prime Minister concludes that,

“the end result will be that every willing patient is a research patient; that every time you use the NHS you’re playing a part in the fight against disease”.

He reflects the view of his life science adviser, George Freeman, who also in a recent article wants to see every willing patient a research patient.

Unfortunately, the shared vision of the Prime Minister and the AMRC is about to hit a roadblock because, as T S Eliot put it:

“Between the idea And the reality … Falls the shadow”.

In this case, the irresistible force of their idea, their dream, will soon meet an immovable object, which is the law. Current law obliges the doctor to follow the status quo, even though he or she knows that it leads only to poor life quality followed by death. This is why all cancer deaths are wasted lives. Science learns nothing from those thousands of deaths—scientific knowledge does not advance by one centimetre—because current law requires that the deceased receive only the standard procedure, the endless repetition of a failed experiment. The pre-eminence in law of the standard procedure is a barrier to progress in curing cancer.

I had better close with this. There is not time to take your Lordships through the case law that I have here but I will summarise it like this. Under present law, any deviation by a doctor from the standard procedure is likely to result in a verdict of guilt for medical negligence. Current law defines medical negligence as deviation from standard procedure. However, as innovation is deviation, non-deviation is non-innovation. That is why there is no cure for cancer. That is why the AMRC vision of every clinician a researcher cannot be realised without a change in the law.

We do not want patients to be treated like mice but, on the other hand, we want bold scientific innovation, which alone can bring a cure for cancer. It is well known that in politics, when a man says, as I say now to the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, “I agree in principle with this report”, it usually means, “I intend to do nothing about it in practice”. On the contrary, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, that not only do I intend to do something about it in practice, I intend to devote my entire life to ensuring that the dream of the Prime Minister and the AMRC comes true.