Our friend in Israel, Lenny Hirsch, has been fighting a lonely battle to try to get the health plan in his country to provide men with advanced prostate cancer a chance to receive Taxotere (docetaxel). Taxotere is the only chemotherapy drug so far proven to extend the lives of men with advanced metastatic prostate cancer. In Israel and in some European countries many men are not diagnosed until the disease has already spread outside the prostate — and then, as Lenny describes in his article “Sad Day,” they are not even able to receive chemotherapy.

Well, it’s no better in Scotland. Prostate cancer affects one in 15 men in Scotland. It is the UK’s most common form of male cancer and in the UK it has a much higher death rate than in the USA. It affects more than 30,000 UK men each year, killing 10,000 - at least one per hour. Now men in Scotland suffering from advanced prostate cancer have been told they cannot receive Taxotere.

“Men in Scotland with prostate cancer will not receive a life-prolonging drug on the NHS because it is too expensive,” BBC reports. They mean Taxotere.

“Doctors who have used the drug say it offers advanced patients more time to lead a fuller, active life.

“But the Scottish Medicines Consortium has decided that Taxotere has not proved its cost-effectiveness.

John Neate, of the Prostate Cancer Charity, said: “This decision is very bad news for men in Scotland. I urge the SMC to review its position.”

He went on: ‘The drug is regarded by many doctors as the treatment of choice.’

“Taxotere is, as yet, the only drug proven through rigorous trials to offer improved survival and quality of life to men with prostate cancer at this stage of their illness.”

According to The Scotsman, 800 men with advanced prostate cancer are currently affected by this decision.

The Glasgow Daily Record reports that in addition to depriving hundreds of prostate cancer patients of this life extending drug, The Scottish Medicines Consortium, who approve drug use in the NHS, also decided earlier this year “not to approve the drug Zometa, despite being available in England and other EU countries. The SMC said there was no evidence of how cost-effective it was.” Zometa is used to prevent pathological bone fractures of prostate cancer, including crippling spinal and hip fractures.

What makes this Scottish decision outrageous is that the authorities state “‘While [Taxotere] offers improvements in survival, pain control and quality of life, its cost-effectiveness has not been shown.’” What more is neded to demonstrate cost effectiveness beyond improvements in survival, pain control and quality of life? What else are treatments for advanced cancer for?

Cameron Simpson in The Herald notes that Taxotere has been approved in Scotland “for use in the early stages of breast cancer.”