Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Patient access to new cancer drugs in the United States and Australia
Just read the paper by Wilson and Cohen from Tufts University in Boston entitled "Patient access to new cancer drugs in the United States and Australia" which has just been published on-line in Value in Health. A very interesting issue that deserves close attention. Over a 10 year period (2000 - 2009), they found the US FDA approved 34 new molecular entities and biologics for the treatment of cancer. This number seems a little low; have we been more successful in winning the war on cancer than the war on terrorism? I guess this because they decided (for reasons unknown), to exclude chemotherapeutic agents and hormonal treatments. Upon examining of the list of the 34 FDA approved drugs in the Supplementary Materials, I identified a few hormonal agents (fulvestrant, degarelix) as well as some chemotherapeutic agents (oxaliplatin, pemetrexed, pralatrexate). Are the results of the study by Wilson and Cohen flawed because of their errors of omission or are their results correct but their methods are flawed because hormonal agents and chemotherapeutic agents should not have been excluded?
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