Posted on 12/26/2010 6:40:22 PM PST by gusopol3
ronically, the exact same day the FDA revoked Avastin's approval, its counterpart across the Atlantic did the opposite. The European Union's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use had conducted a similar investigation into Avastin in breast cancer treatment...
Genentech, Avastin's developer, spent some $2.3 billion creating this treatment. In reaction to this decision, other drug firms will be less likely to make the investments required for research into advanced drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
I think it's pretty well-established that, no matter their credentials, they made the decision based on cost-benefit as opposed to risk-benefit analysis.
Call 'em what you will, we need to have controls on what public funds are spent on.
And that's exactly why people should be fighting against any government involvement in healthcare. If public funds were not being spent, the control would be left to the free market (where it belongs).
“I suspect we agree on that as well.”
We do.
I think I understand what is bugging me about this. The FDA is trying to put a veneer of science on a decision that supports socialism. I think that expensive treatments like this cannot be provided to everyone without regard to cost - but to make illegal simply because there is a chance someone may be willing pay for it and get it, and that there will be many who want it, but can’t pay for it - so take off the political heat by revoking approval for anyone.....this pretends to be science when it is really barely masked class envy.
That is a very good point; kudos for making it.
Nicely said...
The list, ping
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Thank you for walking me through the point. I think it’s an important one.
Yes. The death panels begin with whimper as Big Media ignores the Socialist Government that is the decider between life and death. And you know they won’t be deciding death for other Socialists, but those who disagree with their Socialist Government. Just like the ‘Stimulus’ money. Everything for the Socialists and nothing for anyone else.
Pleasure chatting with you...if only all threads were this “nonconfrontational”! Off to bed so I can get up and shovel tomorrow AM. Have a good one.
No, see, this is the brilliance of Obamacare. The GOVERNMENT makes the decision, not you, not your doctor. See how that works? Isn’t it just effing brilliant? It is going to work out just super. And all of us were just so wrong about how awful this was going to be. We just hated it because Barack is black and the democrats passed it without reading it or getting any republican votes.
Got that right. Barney Butt-Pucker would be screaming so loud about that, you’d think his boyfriend had stuffed a football up his pooper.
The problem is today, health insruance is not “insurance”.
Insurance covers the unexpected, the accidents, catastrophic stuff. Not regular preventative stuff. Not necessarily chronic stuff. They really aren’t insurance as we’ve known what traditional insurance is, it’s more “health supplemental plans” or “healthcare cost coverage” plans, or “health benefits plans”.
People want certain levels of coverage. Knowing they will use the plans. Pregnancy. Sicknesses. Emergencies. Accidents. Routine care. Checkups. Vision issues. Wellness tests. Colonoscopies. Whatever. People expect to use health insurance. So it’s really a benefits plan more than insurance. Nobody knows if their house will ever be destroyed. Or when. Nobody knows if they ever will get into a big car accident, or kill someone while driving. Everybody buys health benefit plans with the expectation they will be using them under one or more scenarios in their future.
The ONLY thing that should require a prescription is where the public health is threatened (e.g., to prevent overuse of antibiotics, which allows an individual to spread drug-resistant pathogens).
The FDA already hates me but I don't care. They killed a friend of mine, so the feeling is mutual.
I wonder how many people the FDA has killed with their irresponsible drug decisions.
First Avastin, then a thousand other drugs and treatments. If you look at other cancer or auto-immune or stem-cell or bone marrow treatments, you will realize that many, many of them are just as expensive as Avastin. This is only the beginning. Soon the feds will only allow for the dispensing of aspirin, maalox, and hemorrhoid medications. That is what our arsenal will be whittled down to. They will force all R&D to stop and the drug companies will go the way of the vaccine makers. Every new medicine is very expensive in the beginning, then the drug companies usually reduce the cost and let their patent run out. Right now we are being threatened by a new bacterium that is completely resistant to any and all antibiotics. Do you think big pharma is going to invest billions to create a new silver bullet, just to be squashed by our FDA? We might as well go back to bleeding our patients, as that is cheap and will most likely be the only therapeutic approved by our FDA.
They need to spend less money on research and more on lobbyists, obviously!
The FDA has been doing this for decades—it’s not just Obamacare driving this. It’s also the overly litigious society.
There’s no sanction against them when they overreact, so naturally they use their power and cover their assets whenever it comes to it. A simple announcement is all thast’s needed sometimes—not even a warning—and the thing is pulled from the shelf because of the lawsuit threat. The phenylpropanolamine (PPA) fiasco was like that.
You can look to see more such costly drugs pulled in the future. And drug companies doing LESS research.
Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/politics/26death.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2647680/posts
They don’t even do that...take Lyrica for example the severe side effects hit very high percentage who try to take it.
Pretty poor track record, yet is is approved for treating Peripheral Neuropathy in diabetics and Fibromyalgia. BTW Peripheral Neuropathy is NOT always diabetic cause. Those of us with Fibromyalgia get it too.
thanks, bfl
Exactly right. And because government involvement is so pervasive, the government's decisions can lead to potentially valuable research's being completely shut down, never even begun.
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