British charity says red tape costs lives

LONDON, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Britain's biggest charity says overzealous civil servants in Brussels and London are "almost undoubtedly" costing lives by hampering cancer research.

Cancer Research UK said suffocating levels of bureaucracy were being created as evidenced by the fact that regulations controlling clinical trials for drugs had increased 40 fold over the past 10 years.

Dr. Richard Sullivan, Cancer Research's head of clinical programs, said the driving force for many "pedantic" rules came from Europe where, he said, "Brussels has become a regulatory super-state."

Sullivan told delegates to the Brtish Association science festival it now takes five times longer to get a breast or bowel cancer drug into trials than in the early 1990s.

"Because of complex, contradictory and opaque regulations," he said, "patients aren't being protected, they are being failed."

The Department of Health said it was looking at ways to reduce red tape.