Lord Maurice Saatchi has warned that existing legislation surrounding procedures to cure cancer are holding back doctors from being medically innovative and could explain why no cure for cancer has been found yet.
Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, the Tory peer said he was pushing his "Medical Innovation" Bill through Parliament in a bid to protect doctors from being sued for medical negligence in case they try unconventional methods to cure cases of cancer. The bill would allow doctors to use experimental therapies even if there is no proof that they work.
The advertising executive, whose wife Josephine Hart died from ovarian cancer in 2011, said: "The current law can be regarded as a deterrent and inhibitor of medical progress and therefore is part of the explanation, maybe the explanation, for why there is no cure for cancer."
With Tory MP Michael Ellis introducing the bill in the House of Commons today, Saatchi made clear that his bill would not give doctors free reign to conduct "reckless experimentation" on patients, with safeguards in place to ensure that unconventional methods do not become medically dangerous
"We don't want doctors to be free to do whatever they want because that could lead to quackery and reckless experimentation which we don't want."
"We don't want patients to be treated like mice so that's not the aim at all, on the other hand we don't want a recurrent situation either which means that under hte current law any deviation from standard procedures is classed as medical negligence."
The Tory peer, who previously served as party chairman, suggested that there was "genuine sympathy" in government for his bill as it "strikes a chord" with their reforms to the National Health Service.
Lord Saatchi previously warned that the NHS was "masking" the number of cancer patients who die from their treatment, suggesting that up to 15,000 cancer patients could be dying annually in the UK.