{"id":2847,"date":"2014-10-28T12:18:11","date_gmt":"2014-10-28T11:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=2847"},"modified":"2014-10-28T20:32:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T19:32:25","slug":"an-innovation-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/10\/28\/an-innovation-too-far\/","title":{"rendered":"An Innovation Too Far?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>NB &#8211; Update\/ erratum <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/10\/28\/saatchi-bill-update\/%20\u200e\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;text-decoration: underline\">here<\/span><\/span><\/a>. \u00a0Ooops.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the things I&#8217;ve been doing since I last posted here has involved me looking at the\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;text-decoration: underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/285325\/The_Medical_Innovation_Bill.pdf\">Medical Innovation Bill<\/a><\/span><\/span> &#8211; the so-called &#8220;Saatchi Bill&#8221;, after its titular sponsor. \u00a0Partly, I got interested out of necessity &#8211; Radio 4 invited me to go on to the\u00a0<em>Sunday<\/em> programme to talk about it, and so I had to do some reading up pretty quickly. \u00a0(It wasn&#8217;t a classic\u00a0performance, I admit; I wasn&#8217;t on top form, and it was live. \u00a0Noone swore, and noone died, but that&#8217;s about the best that can be said.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to see the appeal of the Bill: drugs can\u00a0take\u00a0<em>ages<\/em> to come to market, and off-label use can take a hell of a long time to get approval, and all the rest of it &#8211; and all the while, people are suffering and\/ or dying. \u00a0It&#8217;s reasonable enough to want to do something to ameliorate the situation; and if there&#8217;s anecdotal evidence that something might work, or if a medic has a brainwave suggesting that drug\u00a0<em>D<\/em>\u00a0might prove useful for condition\u00a0<em>C<\/em>\u00a0&#8211; well, given all that, it&#8217;s perfectly understandable why we might want the law to provide some protection to said medic. \u00a0The sum of human knowledge will grow, people will get better, and it&#8217;s raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens all the way; the Government seems <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;text-decoration: underline\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-29684785\">satisfied that all&#8217;s well<\/a><\/span><\/span>. \u00a0Accordingly, the Bill sets out to\u00a0&#8220;encourage responsible innovation in medical treatment (and accordingly to deter innovation which is not responsible)&#8221; &#8211; that&#8217;s from \u00a71(1) &#8211; and it&#8217;s main point is, according to \u00a71(2), to ensure that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is not negligent for a doctor to depart from the existing range of accepted medical treatments for a condition, in the circumstances set out in subsection (3), if the decision to do so is taken responsibly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Accordingly, \u00a71(3) outlines that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[t]hose circumstances are where, in the doctor\u2019s opinion\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">(a) it is unclear whether the medical treatment that the doctor proposes to\u00a0carry out has or would have the support of a responsible body of medical opinion, or<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px\">(b) the proposed treatment does not or would not have such support.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So far so good. \u00a0Time to break out the bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens*, then? \u00a0Not so fast.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not being a lawyer myself, I asked around my colleagues for a spot of advice. \u00a0They seem reasonably satisfied that the law already would protect medics who innovated, subject to the normal\u00a0stuff from\u00a0<em>Bolam<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Bolitho<\/em>, and all the rest of it. \u00a0To that extent, the Bill seems to do nothing that isn&#8217;t already done, and so is a bit superfluous. \u00a0On the other hand, it has the virtue of making the legal situation clear, and placing it on a firm legislative footing; so medics would be able to advert to a few lines of statue &#8211; and it&#8217;s a reasonably clearly-written Bill, by the standards of these things &#8211; rather than having to wade through the relevant case law. \u00a0That can&#8217;t be a bad thing.<\/p>\n<p>But there are elements to the Bill that are, to my eyes, rather odd &#8211; and possibly positively undesirable.<\/p>\n<p>One of the things that the Bill tries to do is to define &#8220;responsible&#8221; innovation. \u00a0That seems like an important task. \u00a0And some of its suggestions are reasonable enough on the face of it. \u00a0But one thing is worrying. \u00a0The criteria for establishing reasonable judgement is set out in \u00a71(5), which requires that practitioners\u00a0consider<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(a) the relative risks that are, or can reasonably be expected to be,\u00a0associated with the proposed treatment and other treatments,<\/p>\n<p>(b) the likely success rates, in the doctor\u2019s reasonable judgement, of the proposed treatment and other treatments,<\/p>\n<p>(c) the likely consequences, in the doctor\u2019s reasonable judgement, of carrying out, or failing to carry out, the proposed treatment and other treatments,<\/p>\n<p>(d) opinions or requests expressed by or in relation to the patient, and<\/p>\n<p>(e) opinions expressed by colleagues whose opinions appear to the doctor to be appropriate to take into account.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s 1(5)(e) that made me sit up. \u00a0As far as I can tell, there&#8217;s no particular guidance on<i>\u00a0<\/i>the qualifications or experience that those colleagues should have; and that makes me worry about confirmation bias. \u00a0Imagine that you have &#8211; for the sake of argument &#8211; a tumour, and you also have enough money to go private. \u00a0You choose a doctor that seems amenable to you. \u00a0You also happen to wonder if there&#8217;s anything to this homeopathy malarkey. \u00a0One of the things that attracts you to the doctor is that he also appears sympathetic to unorthodox treatments. \u00a0And yes: there are doctors who think that way.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the rub: such a doctor is really only likely to consult colleagues about the reasonability of trying homeopathy who are of like mind, and who will foster the idea that homeopathy is, at worst, not an insane treatment strategy. \u00a0(For the sake of this post, I&#8217;m going to assume that homeopathy doesn&#8217;t work. \u00a0It&#8217;s not such a big assumption, really.) \u00a0There&#8217;s no stipulation in the Bill about ethics committees, or blind peer-review, or anything like that.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the fact that mainstream doctors would run a mile is neither here nor there, given that, as we&#8217;ve seen, explicit protection from negligence claims is offered \u00a0in \u00a71(3) when<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>(a) it is unclear whether the medical treatment that the doctor proposes to\u00a0carry out has or would have the support of a responsible body of medical opinion, or<\/p>\n<p>(b) the proposed treatment <strong>does not or would not have such support<\/strong>. [emphasis mine]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words: &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry if everyone except you and your mates think you&#8217;re nuts&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Or, to put it another way, the Bill doesn&#8217;t simply codify and simplify what the law already says\u00a0in respect of\u00a0the protections offered to people who are considered by a responsible body of medical opinion\u00a0to be acting reasonably. \u00a0It makes an innovation: and that innovation is to extend protection to those who would\u00a0<em>not<\/em> be considered to be acting reasonably by a responsible body of medical opinion.<\/p>\n<p>That leaves patients very vulnerable; and the fact that the Bill requires discussion and consent from them is neither here nor there, since they could well be clutching at straws or &#8211; at best &#8211; simply beholden to the idea that because doctor knows best in most cases, he does in this one too. \u00a0And &#8211; quite aside from it being in tension with its own \u00a71(1) &#8211; I do worry that that&#8217;s an innovation too far.<\/p>\n<p>*It occurs to me that Oscar Hammerstein&#8217;s mind was a\u00a0<em>straaaange<\/em> place.<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NB &#8211; Update\/ erratum here. \u00a0Ooops. One of the things I&#8217;ve been doing since I last posted here has involved me looking at the\u00a0Medical Innovation Bill &#8211; the so-called &#8220;Saatchi Bill&#8221;, after its titular sponsor. \u00a0Partly, I got interested out of necessity &#8211; Radio 4 invited me to go on to the\u00a0Sunday programme to talk [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/10\/28\/an-innovation-too-far\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[511,2148,397,1266,472],"tags":[317],"class_list":["post-2847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-law","category-research-ethics","category-shameless-self-publicity","category-thinking-aloud","tag-research"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>An Innovation Too Far? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/10\/28\/an-innovation-too-far\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Innovation Too Far? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"NB &#8211; Update\/ erratum here. \u00a0Ooops. One of the things I&#8217;ve been doing since I last posted here has involved me looking at the\u00a0Medical Innovation Bill &#8211; the so-called &#8220;Saatchi Bill&#8221;, after its titular sponsor. \u00a0Partly, I got interested out of necessity &#8211; Radio 4 invited me to go on to the\u00a0Sunday programme to talk [...]Read More...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/10\/28\/an-innovation-too-far\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-28T11:18:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-10-28T19:32:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"BMJ\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"BMJ\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2014\\\/10\\\/28\\\/an-innovation-too-far\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2014\\\/10\\\/28\\\/an-innovation-too-far\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"BMJ\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba3da426ed20e8f1d933ca367d8216fe\"},\"headline\":\"An Innovation Too Far?\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-28T11:18:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-10-28T19:32:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2014\\\/10\\\/28\\\/an-innovation-too-far\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1135,\"commentCount\":2,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Research\"],\"articleSection\":[\"In the News\",\"Law\",\"Research Ethics\",\"Shameless self-publicity\",\"Thinking Aloud\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2014\\\/10\\\/28\\\/an-innovation-too-far\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2014\\\/10\\\/28\\\/an-innovation-too-far\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2014\\\/10\\\/28\\\/an-innovation-too-far\\\/\",\"name\":\"An Innovation Too Far? 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