Ideological Opposition to the Saatchi Bill

Ideological Opposition to the Saatchi Bill

My presentation about the ideological opposition to the Saatchi Bill was received well at the Postgraduate Bioethics Conference. Although there are concerns about the effect of the Saatchi Bill on patient safety, there are some groups whose objections are not related to patient welfare at all. 

The two groups of ideologues opposed to the very principle of permitting wider use of innovative treatments are 1) the evidence-based medicine fanatics and 2) so-called “skeptics”.  The self-described “skeptics” appear to be a group of humanists/atheists committed to fighting alternative medicine, most of whom have no scientific qualifications whatsoever, having graduated in history, IT or other non-scientific fields. Both these groups have articulated their concerns that the bill is a “quack’s charter”.

Both these groups suffer from ethical blindness. They fail to appreciate that bad science can be good ethics. Similarly good science can be bad ethics, as the medical experiments of Nazi Germany demonstrate all too well (experiments which have driven the current framework for research governance). 

It would be blinkered thinking to consider that lack of research evidence prohibits the use of a treatment. The pioneer of the PRCT, Austin Bradford Hill, stated

‘All scientific work is incomplete - whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. This does not confer on us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action it appears to demand at a given time.’

He also stated that

‘Any belief that the controlled trial is the only way (to study therapeutic efficacy) would mean that not only that the pendulum had swung too far but that it has swung right off the hook.'

Ethical illiteracy is worse than scientific illiteracy in this context. Ironically, the humanists seem to have lost sight of their humanity.