From the WSJ:
A consortium including European universities and medical groups plans to give experimental drugs to West African Ebola patients without assigning some to a placebo group, touching off an intense trans-Atlantic quarrel over what is ethical and effective in treating the virus.
Academics and medical groups in the U.K. and France, such as Oxford University, the Wellcome Trust, Doctors Without Borders and Institut Pasteur of France, have decided to give the drugs to sick African patients without randomly assigning other patients to a control group not getting the medicines. They say that in a ghastly epidemic, it is unethical to hold back treatment from anyone.
That has put them at odds with senior U.S. officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Luciana L. Borio, FDA assistant commissioner for counterterrorism and emerging threats, told public-health officials at the World Health Organization in Geneva this month she was extremely concerned by the plans to give the medicines to patients without better evidence they work and aren’t highly toxic. “This is too urgent an issue for us not to start out with what we know is scientifically best,” said Dr. Borio. “The fastest and most definitive way to get answers about what are the best products is a randomized clinical trial.”
What crap. Randomized trials are not scientifically best, they are just tools no better -- probably worse -- than others to establish what works in who. Dr. Borio, spare us your holier than thou invocation of the randomize trial catechism...
Then there is this: The FDA yet again asked for more data on a drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal disease that kills people before they are 30. The agency doesn't think the measure of response is statistically precise enough...
After receiving criticism the agency assured the public: "The FDA also plans to hold an expert advisory committee “to gain advice from outside experts and interested stakeholders on the adequacy of the data to support approval, including the possibility of ‘accelerated approval’—a mechanism to approve drugs in particular situations prior to the availability of definitive evidence of effectiveness.”
More crap.
The FDA had already received expert advice from Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, an advocacy group founded by family members frustrated by a lack of research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, (who) initiated and wrote a draft guidance for pharmaceutical companies trying to develop drugs to treat the fatal condition.
...
A consortium including European universities and medical groups plans to give experimental drugs to West African Ebola patients without assigning some to a placebo group, touching off an intense trans-Atlantic quarrel over what is ethical and effective in treating the virus.
Academics and medical groups in the U.K. and France, such as Oxford University, the Wellcome Trust, Doctors Without Borders and Institut Pasteur of France, have decided to give the drugs to sick African patients without randomly assigning other patients to a control group not getting the medicines. They say that in a ghastly epidemic, it is unethical to hold back treatment from anyone.
That has put them at odds with senior U.S. officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Luciana L. Borio, FDA assistant commissioner for counterterrorism and emerging threats, told public-health officials at the World Health Organization in Geneva this month she was extremely concerned by the plans to give the medicines to patients without better evidence they work and aren’t highly toxic. “This is too urgent an issue for us not to start out with what we know is scientifically best,” said Dr. Borio. “The fastest and most definitive way to get answers about what are the best products is a randomized clinical trial.”
What crap. Randomized trials are not scientifically best, they are just tools no better -- probably worse -- than others to establish what works in who. Dr. Borio, spare us your holier than thou invocation of the randomize trial catechism...
Then there is this: The FDA yet again asked for more data on a drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal disease that kills people before they are 30. The agency doesn't think the measure of response is statistically precise enough...
After receiving criticism the agency assured the public: "The FDA also plans to hold an expert advisory committee “to gain advice from outside experts and interested stakeholders on the adequacy of the data to support approval, including the possibility of ‘accelerated approval’—a mechanism to approve drugs in particular situations prior to the availability of definitive evidence of effectiveness.”
More crap.
The FDA had already received expert advice from Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, an advocacy group founded by family members frustrated by a lack of research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, (who) initiated and wrote a draft guidance for pharmaceutical companies trying to develop drugs to treat the fatal condition.
...
