XRoads

In the first case of its kind to reach the courts, British breast cancer patient Ann Marie Rogers, 54, has won a key legal victory in her fight for the drug Herceptin, after an appeals court ruled that her primary care trust (PCT) had acted illegally in refusing to fund the potentially life-saving treatment for her.

The main problem lay in the fact that Herceptin is an expensive treatment (costing £20,000 per patient per year). In addition, despite studies showing that Herceptin is effective in treating early-stage HER2 breast cancer (which Mrs. Rogers has), Herceptin is only licensed for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. Thus, early-stage HER2 breast cancer patients like Mrs. Rogers are only considered for treatment by their PCTs in exceptional circumstances (even after their doctors have prescribed the drug for them), for which there is arguably no rational basis for distinguishment.

That's where the controversy comes in - who's to say that patient A is more deserving of a potentially life-saving treatment than patient B, given that both patients fall under the same category? And in the first place, is it medically- and morally-ethical to withhold an expensive yet potentially life-saving treatment from a patient who simply can't afford it?

The ruling in Mrs. Rogers' favour could thus have broad implications for hundreds of other women in the same situation, potentially leading to fairer and more equal patient access to expensive treatments recommended by their doctors.