IF there was any consolation for the friends of brave East Lancashire mother-of-two Michelle Hilton who died seven weeks ago after losing a six-and-a-half year battle against breast cancer, it was that the expensive drug she fought to be treated with would be available to all victims that it might help.

They had to endure the bitter irony of Michelle at last receiving consent after an 18-month wait to have the drug Herceptin on the NHS and her then being just too weak to take it. She died only weeks after bosses at Manchester's Christie Hospital decided she could be treated with it.

It will never be known whether the drug might have saved her had it been available earlier. But that awful uncertainty must, surely, never be shared by others.

Unquestionably if a breast cancer sufferer is among the one in five victims with the over-active gene that Herceptin targets then they must have a right to the drug which, when used together with chemotherapy, may give them a 10 per cent better chance of survival.

Though this drug has been available in America for more than four years and was passed as safe for use in Britain two years ago, foot-dragging by the government's drugs regulatory body means its availability is still not guaranteed to all.

Cynics may conclude that the £20,000 a year it costs to treat each patient with Herceptin is a factor in all of this or that health chiefs only relent when a patient or her family is capable of kicking up sufficient fuss. The right to life should not be costed or obstructed at all like this.

And why, after enduring so much anguish, are the family and friends of Michelle having to lobby the government to make Herceptin more widely available -- especially when they believed that the legacy of her fight for the right to be treated with it was that no-one else should have to undergo the same ordeal?