NHS is not just playing with fire, it's lighting them—all part of the (harebrained) plan

More joining of dots in the UKs quest to conquer the world with gene therapy

What is ‘The ATTC project?’

ATTC stands for “Advanced Therapy Treatment Centres”. Its website begins:

“Working together to accelerate patient access to advanced therapies”

What do you make of that, subscribers? Remember, advanced therapies are gene modified cell therapies. They are still experimental in supply chain terms, in that they are biologics that can be easily contaminated through lack of sterile processing…

…and UK NHS wants to ‘accelerate’ them!

This is their mission from the same website:

“Our Mission

The ATTC project aims to develop robust systems for the routine delivery of ATMPs as a standard of care throughout the NHS in the United Kingdom.”

It then goes on to say:

“Over the last five years, new cell and gene therapies have been developed to treat some cancers and inherited diseases. These advanced therapies are different from existing treatments in two important ways: they are designed to restore normal function, sometimes offering cures where an unmet medical need exists and they require new ways of working by the NHS.”

The truth is very different

Some very disturbing facts seem to have been missed out. Nearly all the potential for gene modified cell therapies is wrapped up in rare blood cancers, where the treatment is known as CAR T.

The first to market was Novartis’ Kymriah, approved August 2017:

• Price at launch was $475,000.

• Hospitals have to fund additional heavy overheads to deliver the treatment.

• They are autologous therapies, which mean they are specific to the patient.

• Therefore, the manufacturing and cold chain logistics issues are immense.

• The side effects are cytokine release syndrome (CRS), neurological toxicities and secondary cancers.

Similar price tags and issues are associated with other CAR T programmes, and for cell and gene therapy in general.

Check out UKs Cell and Gene Therapy 2021 database of clinical trials, which shows the massive amount of activity in developing ATMPs, with very little getting to market. Some of the trials date back to 2013!

[as an aside, ask yourself how the vaccine companies did it in 9 months]

Back to the ATTC network programme

The ATTC website continues:

“The ATTC network programme is a world-first, UK system of Advanced Therapy Treatment Centres (ATTC) operating within the NHS framework and coordinated by the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult) to address the unique and complex challenges of bringing pioneering advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) to patients. The centres include:

• Innovate Manchester Advanced Therapy Centre Hub (iMATCH),

• Midlands-Wales Advanced Therapy Treatment Centre (MW-ATTC, comprising Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Leicester, Nottingham and Swansea) and

• Northern Alliance Advanced Therapies Treatment Centre (NA-ATTC, comprising Edinburgh Glasgow, Leeds and Newcastle)”

I invite you to click on the three links, and scroll down to view the plethora of organisations involved, public, private and not-for-profit. Puts me in mind of the camel designed by a committee—23 heads, 37 humps, 14 legs and an elephant’s trunk :)

Undeterred by untold numbers of fingers in the pie, this is the aim:

“As a goal of this three year project, the ATTCs are working together with industry partners and the public sector to develop the necessary processes, skilled staff and infrastructure at scale as more treatments move from clinical trial to marketed products.”

Now, I’m fighting against a rising bout of sarcasm at this point. These therapies are going to enter the bodies of living humans. The hospital pharmacy is going to be in charge of taking frozen ‘vaccines’ from the manufacturer and converting them into the final dose administered to the living human (MHRA has changed the regulations in January 2022 to allow that).

Is that dangerous, or is it lunacy on steroids?

Yes, but we have this up our sleeves, we hear them cry:

Advanced Therapies NHS Readiness Toolkit…

…which includes this: Quality assurance and risk management.

That makes them experts then! (sorry, that sarcasm keeps taking over me)

Then we learn:

“The CGT Catapult is playing a central coordination role for the network and provide support to manufacturing, supply chain logistics, regulatory affairs, clinical trial capability, R&D support and upskilling via specialist training and development.”

So, ask yourself, is this a harebrained undertaking? Is this part of an even more harebrained plan?

The harebrained plan

My take on it is here:

UK is testbed for mass vaccination with gene therapies, leading to global rollout…

…and here is the bones of the ‘plan’:

Bold new life sciences vision sets path for UK to build on pandemic response and deliver life-changing innovations to patients

Tell me this isn’t about the UK Government’s attempt to climb the greasy pole to become #1 in the world of life sciences, but justify your answer if you think not.