‘Morally Indefensible’ Approval Standard Unchanged Despite Avastin Decision, WSJ Editorial Says
FDA has not changed its “morally indefensible standard” of how it balances risk and reward while approving drugs despite its approval last week of Genentech’s cancer treatment Avastin for metastatic breast cancer treatment, a Wall Street Journal editorial says.
The agency’s approval of Avastin as a breast cancer treatment should not have been “controversial,” but it was because an FDA advisory panel ruled that “progression-free survival” was “not sufficient” for approval, according to the editorial. The agency’s “usual” criteria of approving “anticancer agents” has been “extending life overall,” except such guidelines “overlook the real benefits” drugs such as Avastin have on account of some women, the Journal says.
The “finality of life-and-death decisions makes the approval” of drugs of the like kind as Avastin “fundamentally a moral issue,” the editorial says, concluding that “further unsalable article approvals are still subject” to FDA standards that put “statistical models above the choices of dying patients” (Wall Street Journal, 2/27).
Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women’s Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women’s Health Policy Report is a free use of the National Partnership on the side of Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.
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September 6th, 2008 at 7:29 am
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