Some of the UK's top cancer consultants warn that NHS drug "rationing" is forcing patients to remortgage their homes to pay for treatment.
The specialists accuse the government drugs advisory body of "rationing" too severely and call for a "radical change" in the way decisions are made.
Their letter to the Sunday Times also says research success is not being translated into modern treatments.
It follows a decision not to offer some drugs to NHS kidney cancer patients.
Earlier this month, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published its draft guidelines on treatments for patients with advanced kidney cancer.
It concluded that the drugs - bevacizumab, sorafenib, sunitinib and temsirolimus - did not proffer value for money.
But in their letter, the 26 cancer specialists say the decision shows how "seedy" NICE assesses new cancer treatments.
"Its economic formulas ar simply not suitable for addressing cost-effectiveness in this area of medicine," they write.
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Professor Jonathan Waxman on the cancer drug row
They continue: "It is indispensable that NICE gets its sums right. We receive seen overwrought patients remortgaging their houses, giving up pensions and selling cars to buy drugs that are freely available to those victimisation health services in countries of comparable wealth."
The consultants, who include the directors of oncology at Britain's two biggest cancer hospitals, the Royal Marsden in London and Christie Hospital in Manchester, say it is non right the NHS cannot find the money for the drugs.
"We now expend similar amounts to Europe on wellness generally and cancer care in fussy, but less than two thirds of the European average on cancer drugs.
"It just can't be that everybody else around the world is wrong nigh access to innovative cancer care and the NHS right in rationing it so severely."
While Britain is a leading subscriber to cancer the Crab research, this is not translated into "modern treatment for all our patients," they say.
They add: "The time has come for a radical change in how the NHS makes rationing decisions for cancer."
Professor Peter Johnson, from Cancer Research UK, earlier this month besides said NICE's decision raised "questions" almost whether its system of appraisal was appropriate for all types of drugs.
Andrew Dillon, the NICE foreman executive, and Sir Michael Rawlins, NICE's chairman, told the Sunday Times the NHS did not get unlimited funds to bring home the bacon all available treatments.
"There is a finite pot of money for the NHS, which is determined per year by parliament," they said.
"If one group of patients is provided with cost-ineffective care, other groups - lacking muscular lobbyists - will be denied cost-efficient care for miserable conditions like dementia praecox, Crohn's disease or cystic fibrosis."
Waste
Dr Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP and former hospital doctor, aforementioned rationing was inevitable unless the political science increased financing or came up with a fairer way to measure what was cost-efficient.
"Attacking NICE is but shooting the messenger and letting politicians off the hook.
"The government must let NICE get its teeth into vetoing the millions of pounds the NHS spends on uneconomical political initiatives - like over-paying private firms to cream off routine NHS cases - and on totally ineffectual treatments, like homeopathy.
"That could preserve the money needed for effective just expensive malignant neoplastic disease drugs."
The Department of Health said investment in the NHS had risen from �35bn in 1997 to more than �110bn by 2011.
A spokeswoman said: "We have heard from patients that one of their major concerns is the perceived zIP lottery in access to drugs and that at that place are likewise many variations around world Health Organization gets access code to official drugs and that these variations are a lottery depending on where you live.
"The draft NHS constitution will relieve oneself more transparent and consistent the litigate for local funding of drugs non appraised by NICE or where NICE has so far to issue guidance."
More than 7,000 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer the Crab annually in the UK.
Of these, around 1,700 patients will be diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer.
Although none of the useable treatments "cure" cancer that has paste from the initial tumor, they can buoy help extend a patients' life by around five-spot to hexad months.
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