'The doctors won't look me in the eye' - children's cancer treatment in the UK

For my next edition of BBC Radio 4's File on 4 I'm getting an insight into the world of children's cancer treatment. Survival rates for the rarer cancers like Ewing's Sarcoma (a bone cancer often affecting teenagers) and Neuroblastoma (a cancer of the nervous system) are not good. But there is a lack of clinical trials because the number of patients is relatively low, so the economic pay off for drug companies is low too.

Debbie Binner talks to me in the programme. This is the story of her daughter, Chloe:

The European Parliament has tried incentives to encourage companies to trial adult drugs in children too, but still the number of trials is falling. 

I've met two other families who've gone to America to take part in trials there - they say it's saved their children's lives. 

But even trials are no replacement for treatment. Trials are designed for research purposes, not to cure patients. But without new drugs being licensed, a place on a trial is some children's only option. Which throws up ethical questions about trial criteria - like randomisation - testing some patients with a drug, some with a placebo or traditional chemotherapy may be good science, but is it right when the trial is the only form of treatment available? 

Lots of questions. I can't say the programme will have the answers. But we'll certainly debate them: it goes out on Tues 15th July at 8pm on BBC Radio 4 (repeated Sunday 20th at 5pm).

If you have a story about children's cancer, or a thought you'd like to add, email me through the contact page on this site.

Meeting Britain's Street Slaves

Making an edition of the radio documentary File on 4 is always interesting and absorbing. But the people I met making 'Street Slaves' have stayed on my mind like never before.

I met men who're offered work when they were living on the street - and find they're paid just pounds a day, or not paid at all, by gangs looking for cheap labour. These men (it was mostly men since I was looking at labouring work) can be exploited because they're homeless, desperate. But in a vicious circle, they're homeless because they're being exploited. Who can afford rent earning £20 a day?

But I  keep thinking - as I sit writing this in a house with light, running water, chairs, a kettle  - of the Polish men I met in Croydon - who showed me the 'home' they go back to after a day working for £3 an hour; an electricity sub station on some wasteland. They sleep on a dirty old mattress and in the morning they slip out through a gap in the fence, wash in the bus station toilets and wait for the gangs to call with work. They might get paid a couple of quid. If they're lucky.

You can hear their stories here.