Activity

We welcome illustrations. Please supply every author’s present appointment and complete address, along with a phone or fax number or e-mail address for the corresponding author. We ask authors to declare any competing interest. Please send a stamped addressed envelope in case you would like to know regardless of whether your letter has been accepted or rejected. Letters might be edited and may be shortened. http://www.bmj.com letters@bmj.comwhat kind of service our individuals will receive when this philosophy is taken to its logical conclusion and medical doctors are expected to pay for each of the treatments their sufferers need to have beneath the NHS circumstances and terms of their service. This can be the logical finish point of your lots of recent key care initiatives. It may be proper to restrict NHS funding for sildenafil (Viagra) as a life-style drug, but zanamivir seems to become a potentially lifesaving remedy that may advantage the majority of the UK’s population, particularly when the following influenza epidemic arrives. All members of our society supposedly have access to absolutely free NHS medical care, but this provision is now overtly rationed, and also a SCH 530348 manufacturer massive number of treatment options are merely not available owing to lack of funds. The moderately wealthy, which includes politicians, can afford medical insurance coverage with immediate access to specialist care in sumptuous surroundings. NHS rationing, nevertheless, applies for the productive majority of Middle England who are in operate but who do not have, or cannot afford, healthcare insurance or even a consultant’s private charges. These are the quite sufferers who might want to pay their medical doctor a affordable charge for the several procedures or drugs that the state is no longer prepared to provide for them. They already subsidise the NHS, paying .90 per item in prescription charges, and they might want to buy zanamivir directly from me if it only meant fewer extremely costly days off function owing to sickness. This really is an solution apparently denied to them.two I have not abandoned the health-related ethic. I think a doctor’s duty should be to treat each of his or her individuals to the finest of their potential, and so she or he can take no part in rationing decisions, which includes the management of the nearby NHS major care group. I also contemplate the prohibition of effective healthcare therapies to become morally as unacceptable as the Poor Laws on the nineteenth century. It echoes the ethics of an internment camp. It might even be illegal.P D Thomas common practitioner and dispensing medical doctor Gipping Valley Practice, Barham, Suffolk IP6 0AS Competing interest: None declared.1 Yamey G. Nice to rule on influenza drug zanamivir. BMJ 1999:319;937. (9 October.) two Thomas PD. NHS Regulations deny patients low cost drugs. BMJ 1993;306:1748-9.NHS regulations are of questionable legality Editor–As Yamey points out in his news article, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence considers that zanamivir (Relenza) isn’t cost powerful and so will extremely closely monitor its use by medical doctors in NHS practice.1 In reality this is a total ban, enforced by threat as opposed to by legislation. Due to the fact common practitioners are usually not permitted to provide any drug or therapy privately to their NHS individuals I wonderVery old peo.