Cancer doctor hits out over 'sectarian' drug trials

A leading cancer specialist today vowed to bypass hospital ethics committees which refuse to advise women on potentially life-saving cancer drug trials to use contraception.

Two Dublin hospitals, the Mater and St Vincent’s, have blocked radical new treatments because encouraging contraception was at odds with their religious ethos.

Dr John Crown, consultant oncologist at St Vincent’s, said denying access to information on preventing pregnancy while being treated with radical new medicines was sectarian.

“I don’t believe it is a flash in the pan, I believe it is part of a more systematic problem,” Dr Crown said.

“If patients were going to be denied access to anti-cancer treatments for reasons which, well-meaning though they may have been, and I have no doubt they were well- meaning, ultimately were sectarian in a hospital which is funded in its entirety by the State and which provides services to Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and people of no faith, that it was not appropriate.”

Dr Crown said doctors were being denied the unique opportunity to offer radical smart-bomb drugs in the treatment of cancer.

But he revealed that ethics committees had insisted patient consent forms for drug trials should not contain references to contraception.

The first major problem at St Vincent’s arose 18 months ago when the committee was asked to agree that contraception should be a pre-condition for treatment. Dr Crown said he could not believe their refusal.

“I was told that it was not consistent with the ethos of the owners of the hospital,” he said.

St Vincent’s, while funded by the Government, is owned by the Religious Sisters of Charity.

Dr Crown said it happened on a number of occasions.

St Vincent’s and the Mater are the only two hospitals where it is known to have occurred, while other trials are under way at Beaumont and Tallaght hospitals in the Irish capital.

“There have been delays and attempts and deferrals of some research studies which specified that patients could not get pregnant while they were on research drugs because of the risk to the unborn child or indeed the risk to the mother of a pregnancy occurring,” he told RTE Radio.

“It could not be allowed to happen.”

He went on: “The tragedy of sitting down with a young woman who has got cancer and who is pregnant and who is asking you what do I do is one of the ones that any thinking person will try and avoid at all costs.”

Dr Crown said steps had been taken to bypass the ethics committees. Using rules governing European clinical drug trials he said they were would be able avoid ethics committees in hospitals with a strong religious connection in favour of others.