[Joe 6-pack]

"There are still a few holdouts flogging their fake skepticism...Some of these people are rooting for the disease because they can’t win the ideological battle they hope the virus and economic fallout will do what they could not."

I very much want to think the very best of the American pharmaceutical industry. I understand the regulatory challenges and costs they face bringing a new product to market, in spite of which they have still made many tremendous advances. That said, I can't shake my concerns about the revolving door, incestuous relationship between the upper levels of the FDA, AMA and pharmaceutical companies.

I truly hope and pray that all the downplaying of the hydroxychloroquine, results has nothing to do with the pharmaceuticals holding out for more profitable treatment protocol as they have little to gain if a known, low cost treatment fills the bill. If that does turn out to be the case, I hope names are named and the responsible parties are flayed alive.

[monkeyshine]

It isn't my first thought but worth consideration. My first thought is just that these are technocrats and bureaucrats and statistical purists with turf (regulatory and ideological turf) to protect. It does indeed cost hundreds of millions of dollars to bring a new drug to the market. And the FDA is probably somewhat captured by big pharma makers. But imo the bigger problem at the FDA in particular has to do with ever moving goalposts. For example because it is so expensive and takes so much time to move a new compound through Phase I, Phase II, and usually 2 Phase III tests before it can be approved 9-12 months after you finish all the data crunching and file the New Drug Application (not counting the expense of R&D before you even do Phase I testing), smaller companies are indirectly forced to position their drugs to niche markets, relapsed patients, second line therapies, or co-therapy with the already approved drugs.

It is very difficult to prove your drug is better than Chemotherapy, for example. And the FDA moves the goal posts. Chemotherapy was approved on the basis that it shrinks tumors. Yes it does. But it also indiscriminately kills a lot of other cells. It's nasty stuff. And at one point drug companies were all focused on trying to prove they could shrink tumors, when they really should have focused on other things like quality of life, or extending life or both. Things like that.

IMO, FDA should take a back seat and act as a sort of Underwriters Laboratories for those drugs that prove themselves out over time... and perhaps as a clearing house for publicly available information about any and all drugs so that people, doctors and experts can make their own informed decisions without some bureaucrats with other interests of their own standing in the way.