Progressives Against Patients
This week the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed the 21st Century Cures Act. The legislation increases National Institutes of Health funding, maintains the Cancer Moonshot and Precision Medicine initiatives and provides additional funding for the Food and Drug Administration to support the greater use of information from precision medicine and patient reported outcomes in determining the benefits and risks of new medicines and medical devices.
According to an article by Ed Silverman at STAT: “some consumer advocates and academics warn the legislation contains a provision that may usher in a new era of lower approval standards.
Here’s why: The bill requires the Food and Drug Administration to develop a program for evaluating the use of so-called “real world evidence” for approving additional uses of medicines, as well as for any follow-up studies that may be required.”
Huh? How does capturing evidence about the actual clinical risks and benefits of medicines in specific groups of patients translate into lower approval standards.
Let’s give those who opposed the bill a bit of credit and presume they are uninformed instead of just crazy. They have no evidence to show that randomized controlled trials guarantee safety or are better at demonstrating effectiveness. On the contrary, most safety problems are discovered in a haphazard way through adverse event reporting after thousands of uses. And real world use of medicines provides not information that can be matched against thousands of other data points that randomized trials do not capture.
In opposing the bill, Public Citizen proclaimed “later-stage “Phase III” trials that have long been the gold standard for drug approval. Well-designed randomized controlled Phase III clinical trials are critical for weeding out bad drugs; more than a third of the drugs that enter Phase III testing fail to gain FDA approval.”
But the “failure” of Phase III trials have little to do with whether or not the drug is safe or even effectiveness at time. On the contrary, “failure” is a product of being unable to identify reasons for ineffectiveness that would be more accurately and quickly discovered in observational studies.
Public Citizen has used the gold standard as apolitical tool when convenient. Michael Carome, MD director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group opposed the approval of Exondys 51 for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy claiming “It would be a mistake for the FDA to approve this…. It would be giving in to political pressure and essentially eviscerating their standard for approval.... To put out a drug that’s not effective isn’t helping anyone.” This from a group that has recommended not use ANY new diabetes drug introduced over the past 20 years.
Ironically, Public Citizen, which now claims randomized trials are the gold standard had fought against their use in testing the effectiveness of HIV drugs in pregnant women living in developing countries. And some of the groups that were part of the anti-Cures act cabal like Annie Appleseed have pushed for using alternative treatments for cancer that of course undergo no FDA testing at all.
Similarly, Cures opponents deliberately mislead and misrepresented the truth when they claimed surrogate endpoints -- physical changes or measures that are reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit – leads to ineffective drugs. Such surrogates are used mostly in a serious or life-threatening disease that lacks good therapies. As FDA’s Janet Woodcock noted in congressional testimony: “During the last five years (2010-2014), out of a total of 197 novel drugs and original biologics approved across FDA, 84 (43 percent) relied upon a surrogate endpoint for approval. Most of these surrogates have gone on to be well-established tools for measuring drug response or the foundation for biomarkers.” The talking about weaker standards is as devoid of evidence as it is full of malice.
The newly found support of randomized trials has nothing to so with watering down FDA standards. It has everything to do with the belief that real world evidence and patient involvement will lead to an increase in the development and use of new medicines and – by extension – benefit drug companies who have a financial interest in getting drugs approved.
Diane Zuckerman, the President of the far left foundation and trial attorney funded National Center for Health Research -- a woman with little insight and even less expertise about drug development -- pretends to stand up for patients. She is part of a smear campaign against the hundreds of patient groups that supported Cures Acts, accusing them of being tools of the drug industry. I will write more on this slander in a future blog. But for now, let me note that Zuckerman and others like her believe patients can’t be trusted to make such decisions because hope (or pharma funding) clouds their judgment.
Increasingly medical advances determine not only whether we live or die, but how we will live and die. Ordinary citizens, those who are potential patients and the friends and relatives of such have as much of a right to determine a drug’s approval as any trial attorney or far left funded lobbying organization. The anti-Cures Act cabal is more interested in hurting drug companies than in saving lives.
This week the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed the 21st Century Cures Act. The legislation increases National Institutes of Health funding, maintains the Cancer Moonshot and Precision Medicine initiatives and provides additional funding for the Food and Drug Administration to support the greater use of information from precision medicine and patient reported outcomes in determining the benefits and risks of new medicines and medical devices.
According to an article by Ed Silverman at STAT: “some consumer advocates and academics warn the legislation contains a provision that may usher in a new era of lower approval standards.
Here’s why: The bill requires the Food and Drug Administration to develop a program for evaluating the use of so-called “real world evidence” for approving additional uses of medicines, as well as for any follow-up studies that may be required.”
Huh? How does capturing evidence about the actual clinical risks and benefits of medicines in specific groups of patients translate into lower approval standards.
Let’s give those who opposed the bill a bit of credit and presume they are uninformed instead of just crazy. They have no evidence to show that randomized controlled trials guarantee safety or are better at demonstrating effectiveness. On the contrary, most safety problems are discovered in a haphazard way through adverse event reporting after thousands of uses. And real world use of medicines provides not information that can be matched against thousands of other data points that randomized trials do not capture.
In opposing the bill, Public Citizen proclaimed “later-stage “Phase III” trials that have long been the gold standard for drug approval. Well-designed randomized controlled Phase III clinical trials are critical for weeding out bad drugs; more than a third of the drugs that enter Phase III testing fail to gain FDA approval.”
But the “failure” of Phase III trials have little to do with whether or not the drug is safe or even effectiveness at time. On the contrary, “failure” is a product of being unable to identify reasons for ineffectiveness that would be more accurately and quickly discovered in observational studies.
Public Citizen has used the gold standard as apolitical tool when convenient. Michael Carome, MD director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group opposed the approval of Exondys 51 for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy claiming “It would be a mistake for the FDA to approve this…. It would be giving in to political pressure and essentially eviscerating their standard for approval.... To put out a drug that’s not effective isn’t helping anyone.” This from a group that has recommended not use ANY new diabetes drug introduced over the past 20 years.
Ironically, Public Citizen, which now claims randomized trials are the gold standard had fought against their use in testing the effectiveness of HIV drugs in pregnant women living in developing countries. And some of the groups that were part of the anti-Cures act cabal like Annie Appleseed have pushed for using alternative treatments for cancer that of course undergo no FDA testing at all.
Similarly, Cures opponents deliberately mislead and misrepresented the truth when they claimed surrogate endpoints -- physical changes or measures that are reasonably likely to predict clinical benefit – leads to ineffective drugs. Such surrogates are used mostly in a serious or life-threatening disease that lacks good therapies. As FDA’s Janet Woodcock noted in congressional testimony: “During the last five years (2010-2014), out of a total of 197 novel drugs and original biologics approved across FDA, 84 (43 percent) relied upon a surrogate endpoint for approval. Most of these surrogates have gone on to be well-established tools for measuring drug response or the foundation for biomarkers.” The talking about weaker standards is as devoid of evidence as it is full of malice.
The newly found support of randomized trials has nothing to so with watering down FDA standards. It has everything to do with the belief that real world evidence and patient involvement will lead to an increase in the development and use of new medicines and – by extension – benefit drug companies who have a financial interest in getting drugs approved.
Diane Zuckerman, the President of the far left foundation and trial attorney funded National Center for Health Research -- a woman with little insight and even less expertise about drug development -- pretends to stand up for patients. She is part of a smear campaign against the hundreds of patient groups that supported Cures Acts, accusing them of being tools of the drug industry. I will write more on this slander in a future blog. But for now, let me note that Zuckerman and others like her believe patients can’t be trusted to make such decisions because hope (or pharma funding) clouds their judgment.
Increasingly medical advances determine not only whether we live or die, but how we will live and die. Ordinary citizens, those who are potential patients and the friends and relatives of such have as much of a right to determine a drug’s approval as any trial attorney or far left funded lobbying organization. The anti-Cures Act cabal is more interested in hurting drug companies than in saving lives.
