An FDA advisory committee’s 12-1 vote to remove Avastin’s breast cancer indication is unloved - -and misunderstood – by Senator David Vitter (R, LA) who called the decision “essentially government rationing.”
“I shudder at the thought of a government panel assigning a value to a day of a person’s life,” Vitter said in a statement. “It is sickening to think that care would be withheld from a patient simply because their life is not deemed valuable enough.” In a letter to the FDA cancer division leader, Richard Pazdur, Vitter said the committee’s vote appeared to be based on cost effectiveness, not safety issues.
Not so.
New studies presented to the panel showed more side effects among women being treated with Avastin and no overall survival benefit, though they did show women taking the drug had an extra month to 2.9 months of progression-free survival.
Whether or not you agree with the panel’s viewpoint on the clinical efficacy – they can’t be dinged by making a decision based on cost. That’s just unfair.
While the fear of cost-based care trumping patient-centric medicine is real – the Avastin issue is one of data.
Senator Vitter’s clarion call is accurate – we need to be vigilant to call “comparative effectiveness” what it is – rationing. But this is not the right instance to do so.
