Rebel doctors prescribe £10 cancer drug to fight blindness

Eye specialists in Manchester are prescribing Avastin to sufferers of the most common cause of blindness in the elderly, agerelated macular degeneration.

The drug is widely used to treat bowel cancer but has not been given a safety licence for treating AMD.

The rebel doctors say it offers hope to patients denied treatment with the tailor-made, but much more expensive, drug Lucentis.

Under National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines, Lucentis can only be prescribed on the NHS to the worst 20 per cent of cases and only then when they have already lost sight in one eye.

But while Lucentis costs more than £700 per injection, Avastin - which is made by the same company - costs as little as £10 a shot.

Peter Elton, Bury's director of public health, said: 'We think as many people as possible should be treated for wet AMD.

"To afford it we need to use Avastin. If you have only got one eye affected, the other eye might get something else the next year.

"By the time you come to treat the wet eye, it has gone too far. We think that is not ethically acceptable."

He added that Medicare in the U.S. uses Avastin to treat AMD in 48 out of 50 states.

However, the Royal National Institute for the Blind cautioned against using drugs without safety data.

A spokesman said: "While no adverse effects have been reported in association with the use of Avastin for the treatment of wet AMD, there is anecdotal evidence that it has been linked to severe adverse effects, including heart attacks.

"Until clinical randomised trials have been conducted to show that Avastin is safe and effective as a treatment for wet AMD, we cannot recommend the use of the drug.

"Where consultants recommend Avastin it is essential that they provide patients with full information about all available options and that any indemnity issues are resolved prior to treatment."

The NHS is now funding a trial comparing Avastin to Lucentis in the treatment of AMD.

Charities say the rationing of Lucentis and Macugen, a second AMD drug, will lead to 20,000 patients a year going blind.

Both are available to everyone in Scotland.