Why the Church is not to blame in Mater hospital drugs trial row

THE Church is in the doghouse again. You can’t do worse, in public relations terms, than to have people think you would put their lives at risk.

And that is the position in which the Mater hospital found itself last week after it delayed approval for trials of a new lung cancer drug, Tarceva.

Bad enough that this delay, in theory at least, might prevent a cancer sufferer from getting a helpful drug treatment. But the reason for the decision compounded the hospital’s image problem. The leaflet to be read and accepted by patients testing the drug specified that, to avoid pregnancy, they should use contraception. Although the leaflet included abstinence from sex as a possibility, the committee seems to have held up the trials on the grounds that any promotion of contraception would contravene the hospital’s Catholic ethos.