[Shortness8]

Don't often comment on HN but have to point this out as a med student in the UK: the cost-benefit roughly works out for those in favour of giving the therapy when the alternative is a lifetime of coming to hospital 3 times a week for Factor IX infusions, and the additional cost of stays in hospital for bleeds/haemarthroses and the complications thereof. Of course, this also ignores the human cost, particularly the extra care/stress around avoiding cuts/bruises in every aspect of life. In this respect these gene therapies appear lifechanging for those who suffer from the disease. [1]

I will also say I know the team who wrote the guidelines for use of these therapies. I believe they were mostly finished before the infected blood scandal became a big story. Politics didn't come into it.

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nnn51rdrzo

[lostlogin]

I don’t dispute the value in treating these people. The group has been treated terribly in the recent past.

I’m in NZ an our system is closely related to the NHS. The funding is where politics comes in and that’s not usually happening at a clinical level, it’s deeply political.