Many elderly people suffer from blindness caused due to agerelated macular degeneration. Doctors are evading restrictions on expensive sight-saving drugs by offering patients an unlicensed alternative costing just £10. Eye specialists are prescribing Avastin to elderly blind; the drug is widely used to treat bowel cancer but has not been given a safety license for treating AMD. Lucentis can only be prescribed on the NHS to the worst 20 per cent of cases and only then when they have already lost sight in one eye. Health experts feel that as many people as possible should be treated for wet AMD and to afford it they need to use Avastin. If you have only got one eye affected, the other eye might get something else the next year. But while Lucentis costs more than £700 per injection, Avastin which is made by the same company costs as little as £10 a shot.

No adverse effects have been reported in association with the use of Avastin for the treatment of wet AMD, there is anecdotal evidence that it has been linked to severe adverse effects, including heart attacks.