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Pushy patients, e-cigarette ban and the Welsh scientists looking at a potential breast cancer treatment

The head of NICE has caused a bit of a stir in the newspapers over the weekend. After a report showed underuse of NICE-approved therapies, NICE chair Professor David Haslam apparently told reporters that patients should be more like ‘pushy Americans’ and demand the treatments from their GP that they are entitled to.

He said: ‘Americans tended to want to know more about their treatment than the British who tend to be much more “thank you doctor, I will take that”.’

The Government is getting tough on electronic cigarettes and will ban them for anyone aged under 18 in England. The BBC reports this morning that this is because the harms from e-cigarettes are not known yet, and that experts claim that it could encourage youngsters to take up normal cigarette smoking.

‘We do not yet know the harm that e-cigarettes can cause to adults, let alone to children, but we do know they are not risk free,” Prof Dame Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer, told the BBC.

Meanwhile, Welsh researchers are looking at a treatment that can suppress the gene Bc13 and prevent the metastasis of breast cancer. When the compound was trialed on mice with metastatic disease, researchers found the drug completely stopped the development of the mice’s metastatic tumours. Here is the full story at WalesOnline.