A great deal of individual heartache is resulting from blanket decisions by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence on the availability or otherwise of certain drugs under the NHS.

Today we report the story of Mrs Beryl Jackson and her sister who fear that they may be destined, genetically, to suffer the fate of their two older siblings who have both developed Alzheimer's Disease, yet could be denied the drugs which helped them slow down the progress of the illness.

And yesterday we reported the strength of support for the so-called "Velcade Three" - women from the Keighley area who all have a form of bone marrow cancer and are fighting for access to a drug which can extend and improve the lives of sufferers.

NICE's assessment of all these drugs is that they are not "cost-effective" - a cold and calculating accountant's term to describe matters of life and death. Yet to those who feel their lives could be improved, however temporarily, or even saved by them they are beyond price.

Decisions made by NICE, on the sound basis that the NHS does not have limitless funds and must invest them judiciously, can have terrible implications for some individuals in England who can quite rightly point to the additional injustice of people in Scotland or Wales being allowed access to drugs which are denied to them.

There must be a better way of dealing with this issue - perhaps through an appeals system or by allowing decisions to be taken locally. A blanket ban nationally is leaving far too many people without hope.

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