A leading cancer specialist has accused two Dublin hospitals of sectarianism for blocking a radical new lung cancer treatment because it involves a recommendation that women patients use contraception.
It is considered that patients receiving chemotherapy or treatment for cancer should not become pregnant.
Trials of the drug Tarceva are being carried out at several hospitals around the State, including Beaumont and Tallaght, as part of an international study.
The Irish Medicines Board, the regulatory body for drugs and medicines, last week approved a licence for the regular use of Tarceva on patients in hospitals.
The ethics committees at St Vincent's and Mater hospitals have deferred decisions on approving the trials on the grounds that the recommendation that women receiving treatment use contraception was contrary to their Catholic ethos.
It has emerged that the ethics committees had insisted patient consent forms for the trials should not contain references to contraception.
Dr John Crown, consultant oncologist at St Vincent's, said today that to deny women possibly life-saving treatment on such grounds was sectarian.
"If patients were going to be denied access to anti-cancer treatments for reasons which, well-meaning though they may have been, and I have no doubt they were well-meaning, ultimately were sectarian in a hospital which is funded in its entirety by the State and which provides services to Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and people of no faith, that it was not appropriate," he said.
Dr Crown said the first major problem at St Vincent's arose 18 months ago when the committee refused to agree that contraception should be a pre-condition for treatment.
"I was told that it was not consistent with the ethos of the owners of the hospital," he said. The hospital is owned by the Religious Sisters of Charity and funded by the State.
Dr Crown said said steps had been taken to bypass the ethics committees. Using rules governing European clinical drug trials, he said they would be able to avoid ethics committees in hospitals with a strong religious connection in favour of other hospitals.
Labour Party health spokeswoman Liz McManus accused the two hospitals of putting a veto on women's health. She called on Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney to intervene to ensure the trials proceed.