SIR - Many of your readers will have heard about the proposal from NICE, the government's advisory body on health treatments, proposing to stop prescribing the new beta interferon drugs for people with MS.

This is heartbreaking news for people who have been waiting for treatment, sometimes for years.

It is very much the case in the Keighley area. Very few people who have MS in the area have had the opportunity to try beta interferon. Is this the result of a 'postcode lottery' of prescription?

NICE does not argue with the scientific evidence that these drugs work by cutting the number of attacks that people with MS suffer. However, it says that this is not enough to justify the cost.

True, the drugs are expensive, but so is MS and NICE does not recognize this. Most of the cost of MS attacks does not fall on the NHS, but on local social services and housing, on employers, social security and on the families of those affected by MS.

This ruling is a great injustice: there are no other treatments for MS that alter the course of this terrible disease and the government has played cat and mouse with us since the drugs were first licensed five years ago.

I would like to urge the readers of the Keighley News, to help by writing to Alan Milburn, secretary of State for Health, Richmond House, Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS and also our local MP Ann Cryer.

PAUL ANDERSON,

Yorkshire Region Chairman,

MS Society.