PATRICIA HEWITT, the Health Secretary, now appears to have decided that she, rather than our hospitals or health experts, knows what drugs are best for breast cancer patients. Perhaps we should rename the NHS the Nanny Hewitt Service.

Last month Ms Hewitt announced that Herceptin, an unlicensed early breast cancer drug, would be made available to all women who might benefit from it, after a nurse threatened to sue her local health authority unless they paid for her treatment. Now she has intervened again, prompting another health authority to reverse its decision not to fund Herceptin for a patient. Health service officials say that henceforth no hospital trust will feel able to refuse the unlicensed drug to anybody.

A victory for patient power, caring government and women everywhere? More like a self-serving stunt from a department playing politics with patients’ health.

I hope that Herceptin does turn out to be a miracle cancer drug, instead of the latest in a long line of disappointments. This week, however, as Ms Hewitt was twisting the collective arm of health authorities, The Lancet made clear that “the available evidence is insufficient to make reliable judgments” about Herceptin, and pointed out that it is “profoundly misleading to suggest, even rhetorically, that the published data may be indicative of a cure for breast cancer”. It concluded that regulatory bodies and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) must be left to consider licensing such drugs “free from political, special interest or media influence, no matter how well intentioned”.

In the rush to hand out Herceptin all round, the losers could be breast cancer patients. Talk of a cure or treatment for all can only raise desperate hopes that are likely to be cruelly dashed. Nor does it do gravely ill patients any favours to cast them in the role of brave crusaders, poster girls for the sometimes shrill message of the pink-ribbon-waving breast cancer charities. As Michael Fitzpatrick, the GP and author, puts it: “The burden of having cancer is compounded by the burden of having to become both an expert patient and a heroic warrior in the wider battle against cancer.”

No doubt complaints about the rationing of resources in the health service are well founded. Decisions about who gets what are often made on questionable “ethical” grounds. However, breast cancer sufferers with their celebrity and parliamentary champions can be seen to fare better than some. If you want to see discriminatory treatment, try getting more funds for lung cancer research — by far the commonest cause of cancer deaths, but one frowned upon as self-inflicted by stupid smokers.

Health professionals have made great strides in detecting and dealing with breast cancer, apparently without taking any advice on drugs from unqualified health secretaries. Further progress for patients seems unlikely to be helped by drug company hype or moral blackmail from campaigners, let alone the unhealthy notion that Nanny Hewitt knows best.

• SOME BRITISH observers of the French riots assure us that the problem is France’s commitment to assimilating its immigrant communities into the Republic. Apparently what they need is more UK-style multiculturalism to recognise “diversity”. These smug commentators seem keen to draw a heavy veil over the riots in such multiculturalist strongholds as our northern towns or Lozells in Birmingham.

  Of course the new French national sport of automobile arson, while hardly a threat to civilisation, does suggest that assimilation is not working either. But there is a slight difference. The unrest around Paris and French provincial cities might be a consequence of the failure of assimilation.

  The riots in Bradford or Birmingham, however, are testimony to the success of multiculturalism in reinforcing divisions. Makes you proud to be British, don’t it?

  Mick.Hume@spiked-online.com

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