31 October 2017 - After finding that most new cancer drugs appear to confer little clinical benefit, The BMJ’s Tessa Richards reflects on her cancer journey and argues that decision making in cancer must improve, to involve patients at every level.

It sometimes feels as though the frequency of “healthcare scandals” is increasing. The veil is lifted, and the public gets disturbing new insight into healthcare’s harsher realities. The Mid Staffordshire scandal was a notable example; the US opioid crisis a more recent one. Last month, what might be termed a “cancer drugs scandal” hit the headlines.

The trigger was a package of articles in The BMJ laying bare that the approval of most cancer drugs by the European Medicines Agency and the US Food and Drug Administration in 2008-13 was based on “flimsy or untested surrogate outcomes.” To the limited extent that the impact of these drugs has been studied over time, they seldom appear to deliver “clinically meaningful benefit.” A Mail Online headline was blunt: “The costly cancer drugs that don’t help patients.”

Read BMJ article