And so today, NICE is the bad guy for cancer drugs again. Its draft guideline assessment - not final - is that £21,000 is overly expensive for Avastin's ability to stop or shrink tumour growth in patients with advanced bowel cancer, in conjunction with other chemotherapy drugs.
NICE suggests that the usual gain is of six weeks of life. If you accept this figure as a working average, then the cost per week gained is £3,500. Per day, it's £500.