Ethics: A confirmation can offset side effects of life-prolonging medication

"The price of life-extending medicine should be a balance between the burden the patient is exposed to and the hope and opportunities the medicine provides," says the chairman of the Ethics Council, emphasizing that quality of life is individual and the worst thing you can do is treat everyone alike.

Life goes on even if you have incurable cancer. Most women with metastatic breast cancer can expect to live for several years after diagnosis, even if the cancer is incurable. It can be kept calm with treatment and despite side effects, most people live a good and active life. But how much life-prolonging treatment does one have to have for it to be worth the price? And is time important when you have to die anyway?

The Breast Cancer Association had invited a debate at the Folkemødet, and one of those who sat on the panel was Leif Vestergaard Petersen, who is chairman of the Ethics Council.

Both yes and no are important

"Quality of life and life-extending medicine are connected and therefore it is both right to say 'yes' to more treatment and to say 'no' to more treatment," he tells Nordic Breastcancer.

"You have to keep hope and possibilities in the face of side effects and stress from medication. Patients do not always want the life-prolonging treatment because you care about life and cannot maintain a life that you think is important. But there are also patients who think that if there is now a 10 percent probability that the medicine will work, then I am one of the 10 percent. So it is a difficult balance that you can probably only make together with your doctor. It differs from patient to patient and how side effects affect the individual. The worst thing you can do is to treat everyone the same," emphasizes Leif Vestergaard Petersen, chairman of the Ethics Council.

Not acceptable

For some patients, time is more important than for others. A few months can mean an infinite amount to the patient and the relatives.

"Some patients say that they bite off side effects because it means that they can attend a confirmation. You have to take that into account," he says.

But it requires that you can get the life-extending medicine.

"There are medicines that are ruled out. I don't think we ethically can accept that Sweden can offer patients something we can't afford in Denmark. I can't understand that. The Medical Council may have said no, even if the medicine works, because the economic price is too high. It is a condition given to us by the politicians. And then you end up in these unfortunate situations where patients can see treatments that they cannot get because it is too expensive.”