Latest Drugwonks' Blog
Sometimes PBMs and health insurers don't even bother with step therapy or high cost-sharing to limit access to drugs that give them the biggest rebates.
Now they are just switching what drugs they cover without telling consumers.
Swapping drugs to save money is unsafe and unhealthy:
Patients who were switched to another SSRI for non-medical reasons after being stabilized on escitalopram used more resources and had higher health care costs within 3 months of switching than patients who did not switch.
Non-medical switching of drugs for patients treated for heart conditions, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, ulcers, menopause, and pain "was more often associated with negative or neutral effects than positive effects on an array of important outcomes. Among patients with stable/well-controlled disease, non-medical switching was associated with mostly negative effects."
Switching may expose heart patients to a higher risk of therapy discontinuation or substitution.
This isn't just a case of switching from a brand to generic or from one brand to another. Switching from one generic to another can cause problems:
After switching their generic phenytoin, 33 out of 80 patients with epilepsy (41%) suffered from increasing seizure events. The number of medical visits for acute seizure significantly increased in the post-interchange period.
These are just a few of the studies that associate when insurers and PBMs switch drugs to save money, they can hurt patients.
Incredibly, the Medicare part B study was going to non-medically switch the cancer drugs seniors gets without telling them. Proponents failed to acknowledge the risks of such a study. In this content, it should be pointed out that ICER's decision to limit access to new drugs based on how it affects the bottom line of health plans is non medical drug switching writ large.
It's not enough to be against step therapy. All that will do is increase the amount of dangerous non-medical drug switching taking place in the dead of night, without notifying patients or worrying about whether such a switch will do more harm than good.
A new president, a new Congress with a new agenda, lots of new ideas -- and then there’s drug importation. This regularly resurrected bad idea is likely to be tagged onto the budget resolution. This perennial populist poppycock is an ill-considered sound-bite solution to drug pricing that won’t offer lower prices but will result in a public health calamity. The truth does not cease to be the truth because it isn't politically expedient.
Importing drugs from Canada is exceedingly dangerous for a number of reasons. For starters, many Internet pharmacies based up north are stocked with drugs from the European Union. And while many people wouldn’t hesitate to take medicines purchased from countries like France, Germany and Great Britain, there’s plenty of risk involved.
The EU currently operates under a system of “parallel trade,” which allows products to be freely imported between member countries. This means that any drugs exported from the United Kingdom to Canada could have originated in an EU country with significantly less rigorous safety regulations, like Greece, Portugal, Latvia or Malta.
Just last year, EU officials seized more than 34 million fake pills in just two months. And in May, Irish drug enforcers confiscated over 1.7 million pounds of counterfeit and illegal drug packages. So if American customers start buying drugs over the internet from Canadian pharmacies, they could easily wind up with tainted medicines of unknown European origin.
It’s also important to note that drugs from anywhere in Europe aren’t even legal for sale in Canada. So when politicians say we can get “the same drugs” that Canadians get, they’re just plain wrong.
Even more worrisome is outright fraud — many “Canadian” pharmacies are actually headquartered somewhere else. Far too often, importing drugs of unknown quality from sketchy pharmacy websites ends in tragedy. Consider the case of one Texas emergency-room doctor, who suffered a stroke after importing what he thought was a popular weight-loss drug. The online pharmacy had actually substituted the doctor’s ordered drug for a counterfeit, stroke-inducing medication shipped in from China. If medical professionals can’t tell the difference between real and counterfeit drugs, regular patients don’t stand a chance.
A 2005 investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looked at 4,000 drug shipments coming into the United States. Almost half of them claimed to be from Canada. Of those, fully 85 percent were actually from countries such as India, Vanuatu and Costa Rica.
As part of another investigation, FDA officials bought three popular drugs from two internet pharmacies claiming to be “located in, and operated out of, Canada.” Both websites had Canadian flags on their websites. Yet neither the pharmacies nor the drugs were actually from Canada.
The on-the-ground reality of state and local importation schemes has been dismal and politically embarrassing. Remember Illinois’ high profile “I-Save-RX” program? During 19 months, only 3,689 Illinois residents used the program — that’s .02 percent of the population.
Programs like this wouldn’t do any better on a national basis. A study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office showed that importation would reduce our nation’s spending on prescription medicines a whopping 0.1 percent — and that’s not including the tens of millions of dollars the FDA would need to oversee drug safety for the dozen or so nations generally involved in foreign drug importation schemes. And generic drugs (which represent more than 85 percent of the medicines dispensed in the U.S.) are cheaper here at home than in Canada.
Calling foreign drug importation “re-importation” is a clever way to sell the idea to the American people. But the term simply doesn’t fit with the facts. In reality, in addition to importing foreign price controls, Americans would end up jeopardizing their health by purchasing unsafe drugs while not saving money.
A better policy for our new President and Congress to focus on is the issue of increasing insurance company co-pays. American patients who head up north or online are motivated by the cut-rate prices they see on the web. Health insurers could help patients avoid this temptation by reducing their co-pays for drug purchases, particularly for low-income patients.
Dropping drug co-pays would also help patients stick to their prescribed treatment regimes. All too often, people skip a dose, don’t get a refill, or stop taking their drugs prematurely in order to save money. In the long run, though, not adhering to a drug regimen leaves patients less healthy — and increases national medical expenses by an estimated $300 billion annually.
When consumers say, “My drugs are too expensive,” what they mean is that their co-pays and co-insurance are too expensive. And they’re right. Major insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) receive significant discounts from the manufacturers. So why doesn’t this result in lower co-pays for consumers? That’s a good issue for our new political leadership to debate.
Importing drugs from Canada is exceedingly dangerous for a number of reasons. For starters, many Internet pharmacies based up north are stocked with drugs from the European Union. And while many people wouldn’t hesitate to take medicines purchased from countries like France, Germany and Great Britain, there’s plenty of risk involved.
The EU currently operates under a system of “parallel trade,” which allows products to be freely imported between member countries. This means that any drugs exported from the United Kingdom to Canada could have originated in an EU country with significantly less rigorous safety regulations, like Greece, Portugal, Latvia or Malta.
Just last year, EU officials seized more than 34 million fake pills in just two months. And in May, Irish drug enforcers confiscated over 1.7 million pounds of counterfeit and illegal drug packages. So if American customers start buying drugs over the internet from Canadian pharmacies, they could easily wind up with tainted medicines of unknown European origin.
It’s also important to note that drugs from anywhere in Europe aren’t even legal for sale in Canada. So when politicians say we can get “the same drugs” that Canadians get, they’re just plain wrong.
Even more worrisome is outright fraud — many “Canadian” pharmacies are actually headquartered somewhere else. Far too often, importing drugs of unknown quality from sketchy pharmacy websites ends in tragedy. Consider the case of one Texas emergency-room doctor, who suffered a stroke after importing what he thought was a popular weight-loss drug. The online pharmacy had actually substituted the doctor’s ordered drug for a counterfeit, stroke-inducing medication shipped in from China. If medical professionals can’t tell the difference between real and counterfeit drugs, regular patients don’t stand a chance.
A 2005 investigation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looked at 4,000 drug shipments coming into the United States. Almost half of them claimed to be from Canada. Of those, fully 85 percent were actually from countries such as India, Vanuatu and Costa Rica.
As part of another investigation, FDA officials bought three popular drugs from two internet pharmacies claiming to be “located in, and operated out of, Canada.” Both websites had Canadian flags on their websites. Yet neither the pharmacies nor the drugs were actually from Canada.
The on-the-ground reality of state and local importation schemes has been dismal and politically embarrassing. Remember Illinois’ high profile “I-Save-RX” program? During 19 months, only 3,689 Illinois residents used the program — that’s .02 percent of the population.
Programs like this wouldn’t do any better on a national basis. A study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office showed that importation would reduce our nation’s spending on prescription medicines a whopping 0.1 percent — and that’s not including the tens of millions of dollars the FDA would need to oversee drug safety for the dozen or so nations generally involved in foreign drug importation schemes. And generic drugs (which represent more than 85 percent of the medicines dispensed in the U.S.) are cheaper here at home than in Canada.
Calling foreign drug importation “re-importation” is a clever way to sell the idea to the American people. But the term simply doesn’t fit with the facts. In reality, in addition to importing foreign price controls, Americans would end up jeopardizing their health by purchasing unsafe drugs while not saving money.
A better policy for our new President and Congress to focus on is the issue of increasing insurance company co-pays. American patients who head up north or online are motivated by the cut-rate prices they see on the web. Health insurers could help patients avoid this temptation by reducing their co-pays for drug purchases, particularly for low-income patients.
Dropping drug co-pays would also help patients stick to their prescribed treatment regimes. All too often, people skip a dose, don’t get a refill, or stop taking their drugs prematurely in order to save money. In the long run, though, not adhering to a drug regimen leaves patients less healthy — and increases national medical expenses by an estimated $300 billion annually.
When consumers say, “My drugs are too expensive,” what they mean is that their co-pays and co-insurance are too expensive. And they’re right. Major insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) receive significant discounts from the manufacturers. So why doesn’t this result in lower co-pays for consumers? That’s a good issue for our new political leadership to debate.
From the pages of USA Today ...
Keep the Feds Out of Drug Pricing
Allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices, as suggested by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s column “Let’s work with Trump to reduce drug prices,” would result in prices going up and patient choice going down.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, allowing Uncle Sam to negotiate Medicare drug prices would have a “negligible effect” on Medicare drug spending. Its report from 2009, reiterated this view, explaining that such a reform would “have little, if any, effect on (drug) prices.”
Allowing the feds to negotiate prices for the Medicare Part D drug benefit would likely have a negative effect on the program. The CBO predicts that when Health and Human Services forces pharmaceutical firms to lower the cost of a particular drug, this tactic brings “the threat of not allowing that drug to be prescribed.” In other words, price controls equal choice controls.
When consumers say, “My drugs are too expensive,” what they mean is that their co-pays and co-insurance are too expensive. And they’re right. Major insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) receive significant discounts from the manufacturers. So why doesn’t this result in lower co-pays for consumers? That’s a good issue for Sen. Klobuchar to take up with President-elect Donald Trump.
Peter J. Pitts, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest; New York
Keep the Feds Out of Drug Pricing
Allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices, as suggested by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s column “Let’s work with Trump to reduce drug prices,” would result in prices going up and patient choice going down.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, allowing Uncle Sam to negotiate Medicare drug prices would have a “negligible effect” on Medicare drug spending. Its report from 2009, reiterated this view, explaining that such a reform would “have little, if any, effect on (drug) prices.”
Allowing the feds to negotiate prices for the Medicare Part D drug benefit would likely have a negative effect on the program. The CBO predicts that when Health and Human Services forces pharmaceutical firms to lower the cost of a particular drug, this tactic brings “the threat of not allowing that drug to be prescribed.” In other words, price controls equal choice controls.
When consumers say, “My drugs are too expensive,” what they mean is that their co-pays and co-insurance are too expensive. And they’re right. Major insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) receive significant discounts from the manufacturers. So why doesn’t this result in lower co-pays for consumers? That’s a good issue for Sen. Klobuchar to take up with President-elect Donald Trump.
Peter J. Pitts, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest; New York
Elaine Schattner, a courageous and compassionate cancer survivor, physician and advocate has written a blog for Forbes entitled: “We Need To Tame The Price Of New Cancer Drugs” In the post she reports on a presentation by Peter Bach (who she calls a drug pricing theorist!) about the clear and present danger of cancer drug prices and how nothing short of government set prices will make medicines affordable. (I disagree with him on pricing but Dr. Bach is smart, articulate and creative. And he is a Red Sox fan. No one’s perfect.)
Dr. Schattner writes that: “U.S. healthcare costs will approximate $3.41 trillion. Drug prices are a big part of that, Bach emphasized.”
Not really. Even though cancer drugs are a bigger part of spending on cancer care, cancer spending as a percent of total health care spending has remained about 4.6 percent since 1965.
If drug prices are a big part of the rise in overall health care spending, why has the percent spent on cancer care remained the same over time? Similarly, spending on drugs as a part of all health care spending spiked in 1990 to about 11 percent (15 percent if you add drugs used in hospitals and outpatient settings) and has remained the same since then (with another spike due to Hep C drug spending in 2013). The retail spending amount in 2014 is about $429 billion according to IMS. Rebates and other discounts from drug prices are about $130 billion. Most of that does NOT go to patients.
Back to Dr. Bach:
“Although prescriptions drugs account for only 10% of national health expenditures, their prices are rising disproportionately. Bach showed a graph of cancer drug prices at the time of FDA approval, from 1965 to the present, demonstrating a 100-fold increase. “The y-axis is exponential,” he reminded the audience. The same graph indicates that since 1990, price tags for newly approved cancer drugs have gone up 10-fold.”
Two points.
First, Prices are NOT rising disproportionately. Especially when you back out rebates. The chart below shows how most of the increase in drug prices driving Bach batty is in the form of rebates and discounts that do NOT go to patients.
In a reply to a tweet I sent to her about this trend, Dr. Schattner asked if it really made a difference if the price was set by insurers or drug companies.
It does.
Schattner writes: “Bach referred to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation on rising premiums and high deductibles that affect 150 million non-elderly Americans who get insurance through employment. Many can’t afford out-of-pocket cancer drug costs until they meet their insurance deductibles, so they don’t take their meds, skimp on doses or wait before filling prescriptions. Even then, when companies charge over $100,000 per year per drug, and insured patients with cost-sharing plans are expected to pay some fraction of that, steep prices limit use.”
But as the chart below shows, Insurers are not only pocketing rebates and using them for everything other than reducing patient out of pocket costs. They are increasing what patients have to pay as a percent of the retail drug price!
Second, Dr. Bach’s comparison of cancer drug prices in 1960 and today is out of context and made to make an impact vs. making a substantive point.
For instance, Harvard tuition has increased by 145 percent from 1970 until today.
Or more to the point, the cost per cancer hospital discharge has increased (in unadjusted dollars) from $1778 in 1970 to $73379 in 2014. That’s a 445 percent increase.
Hospitalization is a bigger contributor to health care cost. But the interest and moral outrage about inpatients costs is nil compared to the time and emotion devoted to drug prices.
The reason for that is we pay more of the retail price of a drug on a regular basis than we pay for hospitalization on a less routine basis.
Ironically, the use of new drugs has reduced the hospitalization (along with mortality rates and lost productivity) due to cancer as the
charts below demonstrate:
Schattner observes that “Prices are problematic at the group level, too. They’re a burden for public insurers such as Medicare. “These are serious numbers,” Bach said. In recent years, Medicare has been paying an increasing fraction of prescription drug costs. In private insurance networks, high medication prices drive up premiums and tend to reduce coverage for all participants. “Health insurance, although it’s been extended in the U.S., has beenstripped down in terms of what it delivers.”
Not true. The share of the decline in hospitalization is due to the shift to outpatient procedures and most of it comes from substituting medicines for surgery, a trend that is associated with an increase in cancer survival and life expectancy.
So how much could cancer cost if we had the same hospitalization rates in 2014 that we had in 1970 and at current charges per cancer hospitalization? (I use charges vs costs because Dr. Bach uses retail drug prices.) About $1 trillion dollars vs $100 billion:
Over time Frank Lichtenberg and others have shown that new cancer medicines explain from 60 to 90 percent of the decline in cancer death rates and is the main reason hospitalization costs have decline. If Dr. Schattner or anyone can provide evidence of another reason, I’d be happy to see it.
Finally, the increase in cancer costs matched the overall increase in medical expenditures during the last 20 years. The Bureau of Economic Analysis concluded that new medicines for cancer reduced the cost of treatment between 1990-2010. One can only imagine what insurance premiums would be if we were spending $1 trillion on cancer hospitalizations alone. So add profitability and lower insurance costs to the benefits new medicines generate.
Given what Bach presented, Dr. Schattner favors governments deciding what to pay for drugs based on a robust measure of value. Well, it turns out that when the value parameters she believes Dr. Bach’s estimate of drug value (as well as ICER’s) are counted it would increase the cost per QALY threshold to about $250-300K. That would make most, if not all cancer drugs a bargain, especially when rebates and discounts go to patients.
I haven’t done all the math, but I also estimate that the rebates and discounts on the $18 billion or so spent on the kind of targeted drugs Bach believes will drive us into bankruptcy are about $2.4 billion. Estimates derived from a recent Millman study of the drivers of cancer costs done for the Community Oncology Alliance suggest about 1.25 million people with cancer undergo active treatment each year. I assume that half of these patients are likely to get targeted or immunotherapy and that $2 billion of the rebates are generated from such products. That’s about $3800 per patient, enough to eliminate all but a few hundred dollars of out of pocket costs for those not protected from such a burden.
Yet, my guess is people still would want to solve for price by having the government negotiate prices. They support government price control (the euphemism is negotiation) of drug companies in the same of economic justice and are impelled by the feeling the industry as a whole generates excessive or windfall profits it doesn’t deserve. As I pointed out in my last blog, price competition does not lead to lower prices in the long run since innovation – which requires more investment and higher costs – is the kind of competition that matters.
In any event, it should be noted that at present the government already negotiates drug prices through the VA, Medicare, Medicaid, the Public health service and the Defense Department. (Average discount: 60 percent) And it should also be noted that such negotiations are always paired with limits on access (as they are in Europe) and that such limits on access such as cost sharing, step therapy and outright caps increase death and morbidity.
If Dr. Schattner wants a kinder, gentler version of the cancer Abacus, she should bear in mind that there is no value framework in the world that does NOT limit access to reduce prices and does not reduce the pace of innovation. Indeed, in the past Bach has argued against using higher priced drugs because they do not add more average survival to patients than older, less expensive drugs developed decades ago.
As the last chart shows, the impact of solving for price would be hundreds of thousands of additional cancer patients dying that are alive today. Note that the steep decline in life years lost began as targeted medicines were introduced compared to what would have happened without new drugs.
Source: The Impact of Pharmaceutical Innovation on Premature Cancer Mortality in Canada, 2000-2011
Solving for price exacts a high cost on society.
From the pages of the Washington Examiner ...
Potential FDA chiefs eye faster drug approvals
Donald Trump's potential choices to lead the Food and Drug Administration have called for the agency to ramp up approval of new products, though in drastically different ways.
Two people have been floated as being under consideration to lead the agency: agency veteran and physician Scott Gottlieb and libertarian and investment firm director Jim O'Neill.
Both candidates reflect a desire by President-elect Trump to speed up approval of new products, albeit through different approaches. Trump didn't talk a lot about the FDA during the campaign, but he has said that the agency needs to cut red tape to get new products approved.
O'Neill is the managing director at the investment firm Mithril Capital, which was co-founded by Trump donor and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. O'Neill also served as the deputy administrator in the Department of Health and Human Services during President George W. Bush's administration.
He previously has called on the FDA to approve drugs based solely on safety and not on effectiveness, a radical departure from the current approach.
The agency currently approves drugs based on whether they are safe and effective. However, it threads a fine line at times, balancing the risk of a drug versus the expected benefit, especially if it is a new or experimental treatment.
The agency this year approved an experimental therapy called Sarepta for the rare and deadly disorder Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, but came under fire from consumer advocacy groups who say the agency should have rejected it because of serious safety concerns.
Gottlieb has called for a different regulatory approach at the agency, but hasn't gone to the same extremes as O'Neill.
In July, he advocated for clinical trials for drugs that treat rare diseases. He pointed to the 21st Century Cures Act, which Obama signed into law on Tuesday and would enable the agency to approve drugs using a different clinical endpoint called a surrogate measure.
"These are interim endpoints that can be used to more quickly gauge a medicine's benefit, such as measuring its ability to shrink a patient's liver rather than having to wait for kids to accrue enough disability to see if a drug can help them walk or breathe better," he wrote in the Chicago Tribune.
He also said the law nudges the FDA to make wider use of "adaptive" trials that test a drug on a smaller group of patients.
An agency veteran who worked with Gottlieb said that having support from the agency's career staff is vitally important to getting goals accomplished.
"It is important for the commissioner to be a change agent, not a bomb thrower," said Peter Pitts, a former associate commissioner at the FDA and the president and CEO of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. "If you bring in someone who is aggressively contrary to agency culture, those [career staff] will simply wait him out."
However, if a commissioner can get buy-in from career staff who actually review products, it can "help him accomplish it," Pitts said.
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, has problems with both potential picks.
"I don't know if there is any reason to guess that the president has a real vision for the FDA besides the broad brush deregulate," said group President Robert Weissman. "I think that both of these potential candidates are in line with that. Both of them on the pharma side particularly aim to lower the standard of review for new drugs, presumably for existing drugs as well."
It is not clear who Trump will pick for the FDA. However, several other Cabinet picks have shown that Trump is willing to tap people who aim to radically shake up the agencies they are set to lead.
For instance, Trump tapped former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to lead the Energy Department, an agency he pledged to eliminate while running for president in 2012.
He also chose Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt sued the agency on multiple occasions over several regulations and said that people "are tired of seeing billions of dollars drained from our economy due to unnecessary EPA regulations."
Whomever Trump chooses, Pitts said that he is heartened that names are at least being floated early in the transition.
"A lot of times it is left as an afterthought," he said.
Potential FDA chiefs eye faster drug approvals
Donald Trump's potential choices to lead the Food and Drug Administration have called for the agency to ramp up approval of new products, though in drastically different ways.
Two people have been floated as being under consideration to lead the agency: agency veteran and physician Scott Gottlieb and libertarian and investment firm director Jim O'Neill.
Both candidates reflect a desire by President-elect Trump to speed up approval of new products, albeit through different approaches. Trump didn't talk a lot about the FDA during the campaign, but he has said that the agency needs to cut red tape to get new products approved.
O'Neill is the managing director at the investment firm Mithril Capital, which was co-founded by Trump donor and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. O'Neill also served as the deputy administrator in the Department of Health and Human Services during President George W. Bush's administration.
He previously has called on the FDA to approve drugs based solely on safety and not on effectiveness, a radical departure from the current approach.
The agency currently approves drugs based on whether they are safe and effective. However, it threads a fine line at times, balancing the risk of a drug versus the expected benefit, especially if it is a new or experimental treatment.
The agency this year approved an experimental therapy called Sarepta for the rare and deadly disorder Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, but came under fire from consumer advocacy groups who say the agency should have rejected it because of serious safety concerns.
Gottlieb has called for a different regulatory approach at the agency, but hasn't gone to the same extremes as O'Neill.
In July, he advocated for clinical trials for drugs that treat rare diseases. He pointed to the 21st Century Cures Act, which Obama signed into law on Tuesday and would enable the agency to approve drugs using a different clinical endpoint called a surrogate measure.
"These are interim endpoints that can be used to more quickly gauge a medicine's benefit, such as measuring its ability to shrink a patient's liver rather than having to wait for kids to accrue enough disability to see if a drug can help them walk or breathe better," he wrote in the Chicago Tribune.
He also said the law nudges the FDA to make wider use of "adaptive" trials that test a drug on a smaller group of patients.
An agency veteran who worked with Gottlieb said that having support from the agency's career staff is vitally important to getting goals accomplished.
"It is important for the commissioner to be a change agent, not a bomb thrower," said Peter Pitts, a former associate commissioner at the FDA and the president and CEO of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. "If you bring in someone who is aggressively contrary to agency culture, those [career staff] will simply wait him out."
However, if a commissioner can get buy-in from career staff who actually review products, it can "help him accomplish it," Pitts said.
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, has problems with both potential picks.
"I don't know if there is any reason to guess that the president has a real vision for the FDA besides the broad brush deregulate," said group President Robert Weissman. "I think that both of these potential candidates are in line with that. Both of them on the pharma side particularly aim to lower the standard of review for new drugs, presumably for existing drugs as well."
It is not clear who Trump will pick for the FDA. However, several other Cabinet picks have shown that Trump is willing to tap people who aim to radically shake up the agencies they are set to lead.
For instance, Trump tapped former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to lead the Energy Department, an agency he pledged to eliminate while running for president in 2012.
He also chose Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt sued the agency on multiple occasions over several regulations and said that people "are tired of seeing billions of dollars drained from our economy due to unnecessary EPA regulations."
Whomever Trump chooses, Pitts said that he is heartened that names are at least being floated early in the transition.
"A lot of times it is left as an afterthought," he said.
Note: Today's blog is from the very talented Nicole Gray, formerly a reporter for BioPharmaDive and now an independent journalist who is covering and commenting on the passage and implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act in terms of how it will affect the patient groups that supported it. Of note is the role The Critical Path Institute will play in ensuring that many of the objectives enshrined in the legislation are realized.
Yesterday the Alzheimer’s Association was one of hundreds of patient/disease advocacy groups celebrating passage of the Cures Act. From the beginning, when Representatives Fred Upton and Diane DeGette introduced the bill in May 2015, the association rallied long and hard for this legislation, driven by the sense of urgency around Alzheimer’s disease (AD)—the leading cause of death from a disease that can’t be prevented or cured; the most expensive disease in the U.S. and a disease associated with a tremendous personal burden borne by patients and their families.
When Lilly canceled the solanezumab development program last month, it was disappointing, but not a complete surprise. Unlike oncology, AD drug development has been a battlefield where there have been very few victories.
Between 2000 and 2012, there were 413 AD trials, including 83 phase III trials. While some of these studies tested disease-modifying or immunologic drugs, most focused on treating symptoms. The overall failure rate was 99.6%. There hasn’t been a new drug approved for AD since 2003 when Namenda was approved for symptomatic treatment of moderate-to-severe AD.
Despite the high level of risk associated with AD drug development, committed companies continue to pursue R&D in this space, but it’s still not enough. As of December 2016, there are 23 drugs in phase 3 development for AD and 134 active trials---a mere pittance compared with oncology in which there are close to 5,000 active drug trials in process, and more recruiting.
As Jeffrey Cummings from the Center for Brain Health at the Cleveland Clinic noted earlier this year, “Overall, the ecosystem of AD drug development must be altered to yield more targets and more candidate therapies if a robust pipeline of therapies is to be established.”
That’s where the Cures Act comes in. The AD research community stands to benefit in many ways from this eleventh-hour bipartisan feat, especially from the $1.6 billion Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative and the funding of the EUREKA prize competition to spur innovation in AD research.
Cures is being hailed as groundbreaking legislation, but for AD researchers, many of the law’s built-in initiatives reflect current best practices in Alzheimer’s R&D---large-scale data-sharing, innovative trials design and mega-collaboration. The day after Cures passed in the Senate, the AD research community convened in San Diego at CTAD to listen to a post-mortem recap from Lilly on sola, as well as more encouraging updates from companies like Biogen, which presented phase 1B data showing that adacanumab successfully reduced beta-amyloid plaques in the brains of AD patients; EIP Pharma, which highlighted positive phase 2A data on neflamapidmod in patients with mild cognitive impairment; Eisai with positive phase 1B data on its BACE inhibitor and Sangamo Biosciences, which presented positive, very early-stage data on its gene therapy.
On the last day of the conference, Anavex Life Sciences, a small company with a first-in-class small-molecule, sigma-1 receptor agonist in phase 2A development for mild-to-moderate AD, presented safety and exploratory efficacy data from a 32-patient study on ANAVEX 2-73. Phase 2A, 57-week data demonstrated a favorable safety and tolerability profile, in addition to positive functional and behavioral outcomes. There were significant improvements in insomnia, depression and agitation, and patients reported feeling happier, being able to play golf again, enjoying international travel and even having more compassion for children.
The presentation’s high point was the cognition data. The data showed early signs of a disease-modifying effect when ANAVEX 2-73 was compared with the current standard of care, with drug-related improvements in attention, working memory, verbal learning and other cognitive domains, compared with declines in the standard-of-care population. And when treated patients were tracked based on MMSE/ADL/CogState scores, after 57 weeks, the scores hovered right around baseline, suggesting cognitive stability.
“This is the first drug to demonstrate statistically significant improvement in cognitive domains. We were able to learn from the vast data available from other AD trials,” said Christopher Missling, PhD, CEO of Anavex. “We learned from others’ failures and we were able to factor everything that we know about this disease into our development process.”
As a small company, Anavex has been able to leverage data made available through the Critical Path Institute’s Coalition Against Major Diseases (CAMD) to inform clinical trial design. CAMD facilitates sharing of precompetitive patient-level data from legacy clinical trials, and supported development of a clinical trial simulation tool for AD.
Because of collaborative culture of the AD research community, and the groundwork laid by CPI and other stakeholders, Anavex was able to successfully use adaptive clinical trial design to test their drug in 32 patients and show a statistically significant effect sufficient to justify moving into phase III.
The Cures Act is intended to create more opportunities for companies to find methods to determine early on whether a drug has what it takes to cross the finish line---and when a drug shows real potential, and meets rigorous safety standards, new drug-development tools will be available to make the pathway to approval more straightforward.
“I think the legislation is extremely important because it helps to allocate resources. Time is always lost in the interfaces between companies and the FDA. Every day counts,” said Missling.
In reality, implementation of Cures will be slow-moving. Nonetheless, the additional funding and adoption of more innovate trial design could move the target 2025 date for approval of a disease-modifying AD treatment up a year or two, possibly more.
That’s what twenty-first century victories are made of---pragmatic, collaborative and relentless research that uses new technologies and reserves of knowledge to accelerate drug development and approval.
Yesterday the Alzheimer’s Association was one of hundreds of patient/disease advocacy groups celebrating passage of the Cures Act. From the beginning, when Representatives Fred Upton and Diane DeGette introduced the bill in May 2015, the association rallied long and hard for this legislation, driven by the sense of urgency around Alzheimer’s disease (AD)—the leading cause of death from a disease that can’t be prevented or cured; the most expensive disease in the U.S. and a disease associated with a tremendous personal burden borne by patients and their families.
When Lilly canceled the solanezumab development program last month, it was disappointing, but not a complete surprise. Unlike oncology, AD drug development has been a battlefield where there have been very few victories.
Between 2000 and 2012, there were 413 AD trials, including 83 phase III trials. While some of these studies tested disease-modifying or immunologic drugs, most focused on treating symptoms. The overall failure rate was 99.6%. There hasn’t been a new drug approved for AD since 2003 when Namenda was approved for symptomatic treatment of moderate-to-severe AD.
Despite the high level of risk associated with AD drug development, committed companies continue to pursue R&D in this space, but it’s still not enough. As of December 2016, there are 23 drugs in phase 3 development for AD and 134 active trials---a mere pittance compared with oncology in which there are close to 5,000 active drug trials in process, and more recruiting.
As Jeffrey Cummings from the Center for Brain Health at the Cleveland Clinic noted earlier this year, “Overall, the ecosystem of AD drug development must be altered to yield more targets and more candidate therapies if a robust pipeline of therapies is to be established.”
That’s where the Cures Act comes in. The AD research community stands to benefit in many ways from this eleventh-hour bipartisan feat, especially from the $1.6 billion Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative and the funding of the EUREKA prize competition to spur innovation in AD research.
Cures is being hailed as groundbreaking legislation, but for AD researchers, many of the law’s built-in initiatives reflect current best practices in Alzheimer’s R&D---large-scale data-sharing, innovative trials design and mega-collaboration. The day after Cures passed in the Senate, the AD research community convened in San Diego at CTAD to listen to a post-mortem recap from Lilly on sola, as well as more encouraging updates from companies like Biogen, which presented phase 1B data showing that adacanumab successfully reduced beta-amyloid plaques in the brains of AD patients; EIP Pharma, which highlighted positive phase 2A data on neflamapidmod in patients with mild cognitive impairment; Eisai with positive phase 1B data on its BACE inhibitor and Sangamo Biosciences, which presented positive, very early-stage data on its gene therapy.
On the last day of the conference, Anavex Life Sciences, a small company with a first-in-class small-molecule, sigma-1 receptor agonist in phase 2A development for mild-to-moderate AD, presented safety and exploratory efficacy data from a 32-patient study on ANAVEX 2-73. Phase 2A, 57-week data demonstrated a favorable safety and tolerability profile, in addition to positive functional and behavioral outcomes. There were significant improvements in insomnia, depression and agitation, and patients reported feeling happier, being able to play golf again, enjoying international travel and even having more compassion for children.
The presentation’s high point was the cognition data. The data showed early signs of a disease-modifying effect when ANAVEX 2-73 was compared with the current standard of care, with drug-related improvements in attention, working memory, verbal learning and other cognitive domains, compared with declines in the standard-of-care population. And when treated patients were tracked based on MMSE/ADL/CogState scores, after 57 weeks, the scores hovered right around baseline, suggesting cognitive stability.
“This is the first drug to demonstrate statistically significant improvement in cognitive domains. We were able to learn from the vast data available from other AD trials,” said Christopher Missling, PhD, CEO of Anavex. “We learned from others’ failures and we were able to factor everything that we know about this disease into our development process.”
As a small company, Anavex has been able to leverage data made available through the Critical Path Institute’s Coalition Against Major Diseases (CAMD) to inform clinical trial design. CAMD facilitates sharing of precompetitive patient-level data from legacy clinical trials, and supported development of a clinical trial simulation tool for AD.
Because of collaborative culture of the AD research community, and the groundwork laid by CPI and other stakeholders, Anavex was able to successfully use adaptive clinical trial design to test their drug in 32 patients and show a statistically significant effect sufficient to justify moving into phase III.
The Cures Act is intended to create more opportunities for companies to find methods to determine early on whether a drug has what it takes to cross the finish line---and when a drug shows real potential, and meets rigorous safety standards, new drug-development tools will be available to make the pathway to approval more straightforward.
“I think the legislation is extremely important because it helps to allocate resources. Time is always lost in the interfaces between companies and the FDA. Every day counts,” said Missling.
In reality, implementation of Cures will be slow-moving. Nonetheless, the additional funding and adoption of more innovate trial design could move the target 2025 date for approval of a disease-modifying AD treatment up a year or two, possibly more.
That’s what twenty-first century victories are made of---pragmatic, collaborative and relentless research that uses new technologies and reserves of knowledge to accelerate drug development and approval.
My letter to the NY Times ...
To the editor:
Clyde Haberman, in Lives and Profits in the Balance: The High Stakes of Medical Patents (NYT, December 11, 2016) raises an important issue – and then gets it wrong. Patents save lives and enhance the value of medicines. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Patents add the fuel of interest to the passion of genius.” Mr. Haberman points to the Bayh/Dole Act, and suggests that the innovator pharmaceutical industry is getting a free ride on R&D but, according to an article in Health Affairs, drugs with public-sector patents accounted for only 2.5 percent of US prescription drug spending. Also, Haberman refers to the Hepatitis C medicine Sovaldi as costing $1000 per pill. This is incorrect. Every major insurance company and pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) receives significant double-digit discounts from the manufacturer and now, with competition from other innovator companies, prices are dropping even further. That's the power of patents in a free market. The more important question is, why doesn't this result in lower co-pays for consumers? “Facts,” as John Adams said, “are pesky things.”
To the editor:
Clyde Haberman, in Lives and Profits in the Balance: The High Stakes of Medical Patents (NYT, December 11, 2016) raises an important issue – and then gets it wrong. Patents save lives and enhance the value of medicines. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Patents add the fuel of interest to the passion of genius.” Mr. Haberman points to the Bayh/Dole Act, and suggests that the innovator pharmaceutical industry is getting a free ride on R&D but, according to an article in Health Affairs, drugs with public-sector patents accounted for only 2.5 percent of US prescription drug spending. Also, Haberman refers to the Hepatitis C medicine Sovaldi as costing $1000 per pill. This is incorrect. Every major insurance company and pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) receives significant double-digit discounts from the manufacturer and now, with competition from other innovator companies, prices are dropping even further. That's the power of patents in a free market. The more important question is, why doesn't this result in lower co-pays for consumers? “Facts,” as John Adams said, “are pesky things.”
Pre PDUFA and post 21st Century Cures vote, BioCentury reports that ...
FDA cautious about real-world evidence
A great deal of work will be required to pave the road for the use of real world evidence in regulatory decisions, wrote FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and 14 other FDA staff members in a commentary published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The article sets a tone of caution just as the 21st Century Cures Act and PDUFA reauthorization goals commit the agency to create a framework for the use of real-world evidence to make decisions about post-approval studies of drugs and their approval in supplementary indications.
The article describes the definition of real-world evidence as “elusive.” The authors believe it refers to healthcare information "derived from multiple sources outside typical clinical research settings, including electronic health records (EHRs), claims and billing data, product and disease registries, and data gathered through personal devices and health applications.”
It warns that the “allure of analyzing existing data may lead to flawed conclusions," and says this “concern is especially salient in light of the growing proliferation of precision molecular medicine and treatments for rare diseases, many of which are anticipated to undergo review in accelerated approval programs.”
Real-world evidence could play an important role in reviewing such applications, the authors note, which adds to the urgency of developing rigorous methods for collecting and analyzing such information. The authors express optimism about "long-term prospects for the evolution of mature, robust methodologic approaches to the incorporation of real-world evidence into therapeutic development and evaluation," but emphasize that "caution is still needed, and expectations of 'quick wins' resulting from the use of such evidence should be tempered accordingly.
FDA cautious about real-world evidence
A great deal of work will be required to pave the road for the use of real world evidence in regulatory decisions, wrote FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and 14 other FDA staff members in a commentary published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The article sets a tone of caution just as the 21st Century Cures Act and PDUFA reauthorization goals commit the agency to create a framework for the use of real-world evidence to make decisions about post-approval studies of drugs and their approval in supplementary indications.
The article describes the definition of real-world evidence as “elusive.” The authors believe it refers to healthcare information "derived from multiple sources outside typical clinical research settings, including electronic health records (EHRs), claims and billing data, product and disease registries, and data gathered through personal devices and health applications.”
It warns that the “allure of analyzing existing data may lead to flawed conclusions," and says this “concern is especially salient in light of the growing proliferation of precision molecular medicine and treatments for rare diseases, many of which are anticipated to undergo review in accelerated approval programs.”
Real-world evidence could play an important role in reviewing such applications, the authors note, which adds to the urgency of developing rigorous methods for collecting and analyzing such information. The authors express optimism about "long-term prospects for the evolution of mature, robust methodologic approaches to the incorporation of real-world evidence into therapeutic development and evaluation," but emphasize that "caution is still needed, and expectations of 'quick wins' resulting from the use of such evidence should be tempered accordingly.
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.
Via Stat News …
President-elect Donald Trump is weighing naming as Food and Drug Administration commissioner a staunch libertarian who has called for eliminating the agency’s mandate to determine whether new medicines are effective before approving them for sale.
“Let people start using them, at their own risk,” the candidate, Jim O’Neill, said in a 2014 speech to a biotech group.
O’Neill, has also called for paying organ donors and setting up libertarian societies at sea — and has said he was surprised to discover that FDA regulators actually enjoy science and like working to fight disease.
A source close to the Trump transition team told STAT that Peter Thiel, the billionaire Trump donor who is helping shape the new administration, is pushing for the FDA appointment for O’Neill, his managing director at Mithril Capital Management.
Trump’s focus on O’Neill was first reported Wednesday morning by Bloomberg.
O’Neill would be an unusual choice. He is not a physician, and lacks the strong science background that nearly all former commissioners have had in recent years.
A graduate of Yale University, with a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, O’Neill went to work at the Department of Health and Human Services in 2002, after a stint as speechwriter at the Department of Education. He worked his way up to principal associate deputy secretary, where he advised the HHS Secretary on all areas of policy, according to his LinkedIn page.
O’Neill first worked with Thiel at Clarium Capital Management, and also ran the Thiel Foundation and Breakout Labs, which funds early-stage companies in areas ranging from food science to biomedicine to clean energy. He is a promoter of anti-aging treatments and technology.
O’Neill also serves on the board of the Seasteading Institute, an organization that aims to create its own sea-based floating communities, on the theory that existing governments are woefully ineffective. “Obsolete political systems conceived in previous centuries are ill-equipped to unleash the enormous opportunities in twenty-first century innovation,” the Seasteading website notes.
O’Neill is not well known in Washington, but has been a frequent speaker on the biotech circuit.
In 2014, in a talk to a group gathered to discuss regenerative medicine, he recalled his days at HHS and expressed disdain for the FDA’s process.
“As a libertarian, I was inclined to believe that the regulatory costs that the FDA impose kill a lot of people and provide a lot of harm to the economy, and I don’t deny that… but one thing that surprised me is that the actual human beings at the Food and Drug Administration like science; they like curing disease and they actually like approving drugs and devices and biologics.”
The problem, O’Neill told the group, is the overall structure and incentives of the regulatory system.
“Every time the FDA commissioner approves something and someone gets sick who used it, the commissioner is summoned to a congressional committee that also controls his budget and forced to testify under oath, why he made this rash decision…It’s a miserable process,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill has proposed that the FDA only require companies to prove drugs are safe before they are sold – not that they actually work.
O’Neill has also said that organ donors should be allowed to be paid. “There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused,” he said in a speech at a 2009 Seasteading conference.
His participation in the Seasteading movement might be a sensitive topic, too. The video of his speech was available on The Seasteading Institute’s website in the afternoon, but by evening, it had disappeared.
In the speech, which is still available elsewhere, O’Neill said that “we can all wish that existing governments will somehow stumble into freedom, but if we want to achieve freedom, seasteads are by far the best prospect.”
Neither O’Neill, Thiel or Trump transition team staffers returned calls seeking comment.
Also under consideration for the FDA job: Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA deputy commissioner.
Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. A clinical assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine, he is a venture partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, and a senior principal at TR Winston, a healthcare focused merchant and investment bank. He has testified before Congress 18 times on health and regulatory issues.
Gottlieb was recently named to the transition team.
President-elect Donald Trump is weighing naming as Food and Drug Administration commissioner a staunch libertarian who has called for eliminating the agency’s mandate to determine whether new medicines are effective before approving them for sale.
“Let people start using them, at their own risk,” the candidate, Jim O’Neill, said in a 2014 speech to a biotech group.
O’Neill, has also called for paying organ donors and setting up libertarian societies at sea — and has said he was surprised to discover that FDA regulators actually enjoy science and like working to fight disease.
A source close to the Trump transition team told STAT that Peter Thiel, the billionaire Trump donor who is helping shape the new administration, is pushing for the FDA appointment for O’Neill, his managing director at Mithril Capital Management.
Trump’s focus on O’Neill was first reported Wednesday morning by Bloomberg.
O’Neill would be an unusual choice. He is not a physician, and lacks the strong science background that nearly all former commissioners have had in recent years.
A graduate of Yale University, with a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, O’Neill went to work at the Department of Health and Human Services in 2002, after a stint as speechwriter at the Department of Education. He worked his way up to principal associate deputy secretary, where he advised the HHS Secretary on all areas of policy, according to his LinkedIn page.
O’Neill first worked with Thiel at Clarium Capital Management, and also ran the Thiel Foundation and Breakout Labs, which funds early-stage companies in areas ranging from food science to biomedicine to clean energy. He is a promoter of anti-aging treatments and technology.
O’Neill also serves on the board of the Seasteading Institute, an organization that aims to create its own sea-based floating communities, on the theory that existing governments are woefully ineffective. “Obsolete political systems conceived in previous centuries are ill-equipped to unleash the enormous opportunities in twenty-first century innovation,” the Seasteading website notes.
O’Neill is not well known in Washington, but has been a frequent speaker on the biotech circuit.
In 2014, in a talk to a group gathered to discuss regenerative medicine, he recalled his days at HHS and expressed disdain for the FDA’s process.
“As a libertarian, I was inclined to believe that the regulatory costs that the FDA impose kill a lot of people and provide a lot of harm to the economy, and I don’t deny that… but one thing that surprised me is that the actual human beings at the Food and Drug Administration like science; they like curing disease and they actually like approving drugs and devices and biologics.”
The problem, O’Neill told the group, is the overall structure and incentives of the regulatory system.
“Every time the FDA commissioner approves something and someone gets sick who used it, the commissioner is summoned to a congressional committee that also controls his budget and forced to testify under oath, why he made this rash decision…It’s a miserable process,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill has proposed that the FDA only require companies to prove drugs are safe before they are sold – not that they actually work.
O’Neill has also said that organ donors should be allowed to be paid. “There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused,” he said in a speech at a 2009 Seasteading conference.
His participation in the Seasteading movement might be a sensitive topic, too. The video of his speech was available on The Seasteading Institute’s website in the afternoon, but by evening, it had disappeared.
In the speech, which is still available elsewhere, O’Neill said that “we can all wish that existing governments will somehow stumble into freedom, but if we want to achieve freedom, seasteads are by far the best prospect.”
Neither O’Neill, Thiel or Trump transition team staffers returned calls seeking comment.
Also under consideration for the FDA job: Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA deputy commissioner.
Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. A clinical assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine, he is a venture partner at the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, and a senior principal at TR Winston, a healthcare focused merchant and investment bank. He has testified before Congress 18 times on health and regulatory issues.
Gottlieb was recently named to the transition team.
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization promoting innovative solutions that advance medical progress, reduce health disparities, extend life and make health care more affordable, preventive and patient-centered. CMPI also provides the public, policymakers and the media a reliable source of independent scientific analysis on issues ranging from personalized medicine, food and drug safety, health care reform and comparative effectiveness.
