Latest Drugwonks' Blog
Connecting the dots cuts both ways. But we bet we won't see or hear much response...from any quarter. Sometimes shame can be measured in silence.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080222/EDITORIAL/967933181/1013
Tabloid medicine
February 22, 2008
By Robert Goldberg and Peter J. Pitts
After serving for more than 12 years in the Army and the Army Reserves, 32-year-old Julianna Gehant enrolled at Northern Illinois University last fall. This week she was laid to rest along with four other victims of Steven Kazmierczak's killing spree. To add to the already tragic nature of the story, a former professor described Kazmierczak as a most gentle, quiet guy in the world. Harder still to assign blame or responsibility. Or is it?
Kazmierczak had a history of mental illness, including institutionalization. He did not take his medication regularly, and weeks before the killings he went off his antidepressants.
Much like the killer at Virginia Tech, the signs were all there. So, too, was the groundwork laid by the media, freelance pundits and by some in Congress to irresponsibly scare people away from taking the medicines that very well could have kept such anti-social homicidal behavior in check.
Less then four years ago, there was plenty of media airtime and political effort invested on Capitol Hill trying to scare teenagers and their parents from taking the most commonly prescribed anti-depressants — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. It was alleged by Rep. Bart Stupak and Sen. Charles Grassley that there was conspiracy of silence between drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration to hide information about SSRIs turning otherwise happy kids into potential suicides.
Here's an inconvenient truth: Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people. The good news is that it's both treatable and preventable — particularly with the timely and appropriate use of antidepressants. But what parent or troubled kid would, in the wake of the concerted campaigns of Messrs. Stupak and Grassley, want to do so? In 2004, for instance, at a hearing where the FDA was accused of conspiring with drug companies to hide data about how SSRIs caused suicides, Mr. Stupak threatened to introduce legislation banning the prescribing of antidepressants to anyone under age 18 "if the FDA didn't act forcefully and swiftly to protect America's children."
Indeed, Mr. Grassley claimed there was a coordinated effort by the Food and Drug Administration to suppress the truth about the suicide risks of antidepressants. He gave top billing to internal FDA studies that looked at the relationship between SSRIs and suicidal thoughts but claimed it looked at suicide.
And so the New York Times dutifully reported the "risks of suicide" posed by SSRI and the Los Angeles Times claimed "Suicide Risk to Children Affirmed."
Not surprisingly, the hearings and the coverage lead to panic and, predictably, noncompliance. Ultimately, the FDA accepted an advisory committee recommendation to require that all antidepressants carrying a Black Box warning that they increase the "risk of suicidal thinking and behavior ... in children and adolescents" with depression and other psychiatric disorders. A decline in SSRI prescriptions followed.
Then, last year, Robert D. Gibbons, director of the Center for Health Statistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that suicide rates among American youths dramatically increased from 2003 to 2004, coinciding with a steep drop in antidepressant use.
The 19 percent increase in suicides among those 19 and younger is the biggest year-to-year increase seen since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started tracking the data in 1979. A similar jump in suicide — and decline in antidepressant use — was found in Europe over the same period of time.
Curiously, neither Mr. Stupak nor Mr. Grassley commented on this connection and it was all but ignored by the media and other self-appointed guardians of medical truth.
The FDA's black box is not killing kids. But the collective actions and rhetoric that lead up to it are. Darryl Regier, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, notes, "Contrary to expectations, other treatments, such as alternative medicines or psychotherapy, which have limited effects on childhood depression, did not increase to fill the gap."
That gap was created by Congress and irresponsibly spread by sensationalist media coverage. When senior leaders within the FDA to tried to balance benefits and risks on antidepressants they were savaged by Messrs. Stupak and Grassley. And when the FDA tries to explain the complexities of Ketek or Avandia, Mr. Stupak demands resignations — in speeches that still include the claim that that antidepressants cause suicides. Drug-company lobbyists counsel cowardly silence. Science and common sense give way to tabloid medicine.
Peter J. Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner, is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Robert Goldberg is vice president for research programs at the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080222/EDITORIAL/967933181/1013
Tabloid medicine
February 22, 2008
By Robert Goldberg and Peter J. Pitts
After serving for more than 12 years in the Army and the Army Reserves, 32-year-old Julianna Gehant enrolled at Northern Illinois University last fall. This week she was laid to rest along with four other victims of Steven Kazmierczak's killing spree. To add to the already tragic nature of the story, a former professor described Kazmierczak as a most gentle, quiet guy in the world. Harder still to assign blame or responsibility. Or is it?
Kazmierczak had a history of mental illness, including institutionalization. He did not take his medication regularly, and weeks before the killings he went off his antidepressants.
Much like the killer at Virginia Tech, the signs were all there. So, too, was the groundwork laid by the media, freelance pundits and by some in Congress to irresponsibly scare people away from taking the medicines that very well could have kept such anti-social homicidal behavior in check.
Less then four years ago, there was plenty of media airtime and political effort invested on Capitol Hill trying to scare teenagers and their parents from taking the most commonly prescribed anti-depressants — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. It was alleged by Rep. Bart Stupak and Sen. Charles Grassley that there was conspiracy of silence between drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration to hide information about SSRIs turning otherwise happy kids into potential suicides.
Here's an inconvenient truth: Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people. The good news is that it's both treatable and preventable — particularly with the timely and appropriate use of antidepressants. But what parent or troubled kid would, in the wake of the concerted campaigns of Messrs. Stupak and Grassley, want to do so? In 2004, for instance, at a hearing where the FDA was accused of conspiring with drug companies to hide data about how SSRIs caused suicides, Mr. Stupak threatened to introduce legislation banning the prescribing of antidepressants to anyone under age 18 "if the FDA didn't act forcefully and swiftly to protect America's children."
Indeed, Mr. Grassley claimed there was a coordinated effort by the Food and Drug Administration to suppress the truth about the suicide risks of antidepressants. He gave top billing to internal FDA studies that looked at the relationship between SSRIs and suicidal thoughts but claimed it looked at suicide.
And so the New York Times dutifully reported the "risks of suicide" posed by SSRI and the Los Angeles Times claimed "Suicide Risk to Children Affirmed."
Not surprisingly, the hearings and the coverage lead to panic and, predictably, noncompliance. Ultimately, the FDA accepted an advisory committee recommendation to require that all antidepressants carrying a Black Box warning that they increase the "risk of suicidal thinking and behavior ... in children and adolescents" with depression and other psychiatric disorders. A decline in SSRI prescriptions followed.
Then, last year, Robert D. Gibbons, director of the Center for Health Statistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found that suicide rates among American youths dramatically increased from 2003 to 2004, coinciding with a steep drop in antidepressant use.
The 19 percent increase in suicides among those 19 and younger is the biggest year-to-year increase seen since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started tracking the data in 1979. A similar jump in suicide — and decline in antidepressant use — was found in Europe over the same period of time.
Curiously, neither Mr. Stupak nor Mr. Grassley commented on this connection and it was all but ignored by the media and other self-appointed guardians of medical truth.
The FDA's black box is not killing kids. But the collective actions and rhetoric that lead up to it are. Darryl Regier, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, notes, "Contrary to expectations, other treatments, such as alternative medicines or psychotherapy, which have limited effects on childhood depression, did not increase to fill the gap."
That gap was created by Congress and irresponsibly spread by sensationalist media coverage. When senior leaders within the FDA to tried to balance benefits and risks on antidepressants they were savaged by Messrs. Stupak and Grassley. And when the FDA tries to explain the complexities of Ketek or Avandia, Mr. Stupak demands resignations — in speeches that still include the claim that that antidepressants cause suicides. Drug-company lobbyists counsel cowardly silence. Science and common sense give way to tabloid medicine.
Peter J. Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner, is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Robert Goldberg is vice president for research programs at the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.
Medicine is often practiced in broad strokes where the individual patient is sometimes left out of the equation in determining what kind of treatment is most appropriate.
Based on the findings of randomized clinical trials, physicians may prescribe a medication that has been shown safe and effective – on average -- in large population groups.
Whether an individual actually benefits or suffers from the medication is another question. A drug that may be the acknowledged standard treatment for the many who suffer a given disease could be completely inappropriate, if not lethal, for a specific patient.
Now, a new field has emerged that is starting to revolutionize how medicine is practiced. Advances in the ability to study an individual’s genetic code have enabled researchers and other health professionals to personalize treatment to that patient. Physicians will be able to select the most effective medications that are able to provide the most benefit with the fewest side effects. Moreover, such information can allow doctors to identify pathways for preventing illness long before it starts.
Health policy analysts, physicians, pharmaceutical company executives, business leaders and government officials recently met in Washington at the CMPI-Duke University Patient-Centric Leadership Forum to discuss developments in this exciting field.
A full report will be available shortly. But to whet your appetite, we will begin posting some of the comments made at this event. First off, the introductory remarks of Dr. Michael Weber, Chairman, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, Professor of Medicine, SUNY Downstate College of Medicine Brooklyn, New York
“Many of us who practice medicine have been living for some time now with what some people call the “burden†of evidence-based medicine, which apparently is derived from the results of large clinical trials.
These trials typically show that the small group of patients who seem to get some particular benefit from one form of treatment might do somewhat better than another small group of patients who might get benefits from another form of treatment. Most patients and their needs are not well addressed by large clinical trials. Too often, these huge studies fail to give clinicians useful guidance in the management of their individual patients. But the whole idea of personalized medicine is going to change that.
In my own field of cardiovascular medicine, we’re told by the National Institutes of Health (the JNC Guidelines) that we should use thiazide diuretics as universal treatment to start off hypertension management. Yet, another government agency, the Veterans Administration, has shown that these drugs are not different from placebo in terms of reducing blood pressure in Caucasians under the age of 60. Why would NIH make the global recommendation to use such a drug? It’s based on so-called evidence-based medicine, where in one large trial (ALLHAT) performed in older patients it was shown that this particular treatment was not significantly inferior to other types of treatment in terms of heart disease and strokes. Unfortunately, issues of study design, uncertainty about the diagnosis of clinical endpoints, differences in outcomes among the patient groups enrolled in the trial and controversies over the interpretation of findings have made this “evidence†of little value to practitioners.
It makes so much sense to talk about personalized medicine, and yet there are major groups of people who don’t necessarily warm to the idea. The big pharmaceutical companies are certainly going to have re-think the blockbuster approach to medicine. It’s very convenient to think of diseases like hypertension, where there are tens of millions of potential candidates for a drug, likewise asthma or diabetes or arthritis or peptic ulcer disease.
But what if we now take these conditions and divide them into 20 or 50 or 100 different subtypes, each of which is going to require a special approach to therapy? Suddenly, Big Pharma is going to be competing with dozens or hundreds of smaller companies, each of which has identified one of these particular small subtypes and has designed a unique treatment for it. Large companies are going to have to change their way of thinking quite dramatically. So will the insurance companies have to rethink where they stand. There is no question that personalized therapies are going to be more expensive, because overall there will be much more work needed to address the multiple patient subtypes, and relatively fewer patients in each case to amortize the cost of investment.
Even practicing clinicians may resist patient-centric medicine in an environment where it’s often necessary to see large numbers of patients every day because reimbursement rates for each patient are so meager. With only a few minutes to spend with a patient, who’s got time to worry about individualized medicine? “Thiazide diuretic for you, my friend, and don’t hurry back!†Changing our approach is not going to be easy.â€
Based on the findings of randomized clinical trials, physicians may prescribe a medication that has been shown safe and effective – on average -- in large population groups.
Whether an individual actually benefits or suffers from the medication is another question. A drug that may be the acknowledged standard treatment for the many who suffer a given disease could be completely inappropriate, if not lethal, for a specific patient.
Now, a new field has emerged that is starting to revolutionize how medicine is practiced. Advances in the ability to study an individual’s genetic code have enabled researchers and other health professionals to personalize treatment to that patient. Physicians will be able to select the most effective medications that are able to provide the most benefit with the fewest side effects. Moreover, such information can allow doctors to identify pathways for preventing illness long before it starts.
Health policy analysts, physicians, pharmaceutical company executives, business leaders and government officials recently met in Washington at the CMPI-Duke University Patient-Centric Leadership Forum to discuss developments in this exciting field.
A full report will be available shortly. But to whet your appetite, we will begin posting some of the comments made at this event. First off, the introductory remarks of Dr. Michael Weber, Chairman, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, Professor of Medicine, SUNY Downstate College of Medicine Brooklyn, New York
“Many of us who practice medicine have been living for some time now with what some people call the “burden†of evidence-based medicine, which apparently is derived from the results of large clinical trials.
These trials typically show that the small group of patients who seem to get some particular benefit from one form of treatment might do somewhat better than another small group of patients who might get benefits from another form of treatment. Most patients and their needs are not well addressed by large clinical trials. Too often, these huge studies fail to give clinicians useful guidance in the management of their individual patients. But the whole idea of personalized medicine is going to change that.
In my own field of cardiovascular medicine, we’re told by the National Institutes of Health (the JNC Guidelines) that we should use thiazide diuretics as universal treatment to start off hypertension management. Yet, another government agency, the Veterans Administration, has shown that these drugs are not different from placebo in terms of reducing blood pressure in Caucasians under the age of 60. Why would NIH make the global recommendation to use such a drug? It’s based on so-called evidence-based medicine, where in one large trial (ALLHAT) performed in older patients it was shown that this particular treatment was not significantly inferior to other types of treatment in terms of heart disease and strokes. Unfortunately, issues of study design, uncertainty about the diagnosis of clinical endpoints, differences in outcomes among the patient groups enrolled in the trial and controversies over the interpretation of findings have made this “evidence†of little value to practitioners.
It makes so much sense to talk about personalized medicine, and yet there are major groups of people who don’t necessarily warm to the idea. The big pharmaceutical companies are certainly going to have re-think the blockbuster approach to medicine. It’s very convenient to think of diseases like hypertension, where there are tens of millions of potential candidates for a drug, likewise asthma or diabetes or arthritis or peptic ulcer disease.
But what if we now take these conditions and divide them into 20 or 50 or 100 different subtypes, each of which is going to require a special approach to therapy? Suddenly, Big Pharma is going to be competing with dozens or hundreds of smaller companies, each of which has identified one of these particular small subtypes and has designed a unique treatment for it. Large companies are going to have to change their way of thinking quite dramatically. So will the insurance companies have to rethink where they stand. There is no question that personalized therapies are going to be more expensive, because overall there will be much more work needed to address the multiple patient subtypes, and relatively fewer patients in each case to amortize the cost of investment.
Even practicing clinicians may resist patient-centric medicine in an environment where it’s often necessary to see large numbers of patients every day because reimbursement rates for each patient are so meager. With only a few minutes to spend with a patient, who’s got time to worry about individualized medicine? “Thiazide diuretic for you, my friend, and don’t hurry back!†Changing our approach is not going to be easy.â€
Interesting omnibus piece from by Warren Ross of Medical Marketing & Media on the various slings and arrows being tossed at the worlds premier medical regulatory agency.
Here’s the first paragraph:
The FDA seems to be under fire from all sides these days, with everyone from drug industry pooh bahs to would-be watchdogs nipping at its heels. The agency, some charge, is going slow on approvals due to a risk-averse culture deepened through the experience of Vioxx and other product safety crises. Resignations are up, morale is down and the put-upon bureaucrats are laying low, the story goes. Others complain that reviewers are subject to political and corporate pressure through PDUFA and a nefarious web of relationships.
And here’s a link to the complete article:
http://www.mmm-online.com/Whats-Up-with-the-FDA/article/104861/
Here’s what I had to say about the David Grahmatization of the whistleblower culture:
Pitts also takes a dim view of people who go outside the agency to complain. A professional, he maintains, should not “weep and whine and try to get decisions made that are based on politics rather than on science.†Whistleblowers, he acknowledges, at least deserve “grudging respect†for letting it be known who they are, “but what is truly damaging are the silent leakers†who try to force political pressure on FDA decisions. “The motive may be either to get drugs approved or not approved—it cuts both ways.â€
As Jimmy Durante said, “I’m surrounded by assassins.â€
Here’s the first paragraph:
The FDA seems to be under fire from all sides these days, with everyone from drug industry pooh bahs to would-be watchdogs nipping at its heels. The agency, some charge, is going slow on approvals due to a risk-averse culture deepened through the experience of Vioxx and other product safety crises. Resignations are up, morale is down and the put-upon bureaucrats are laying low, the story goes. Others complain that reviewers are subject to political and corporate pressure through PDUFA and a nefarious web of relationships.
And here’s a link to the complete article:
http://www.mmm-online.com/Whats-Up-with-the-FDA/article/104861/
Here’s what I had to say about the David Grahmatization of the whistleblower culture:
Pitts also takes a dim view of people who go outside the agency to complain. A professional, he maintains, should not “weep and whine and try to get decisions made that are based on politics rather than on science.†Whistleblowers, he acknowledges, at least deserve “grudging respect†for letting it be known who they are, “but what is truly damaging are the silent leakers†who try to force political pressure on FDA decisions. “The motive may be either to get drugs approved or not approved—it cuts both ways.â€
As Jimmy Durante said, “I’m surrounded by assassins.â€
Previously on drugwonks.com we’ve asked what the difference is between “universal†health care and “government†health care.
We also sent our intrepid intern (dressed as a pill) out to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to ask average citizens the same question.
Here's a link to our podcast:
http://www.cmpi.org/OnthestreetDetail.asp?contentdetailid=595&contenttypeid=16
The answer is that the only difference is a rhetorical one.
But in the United Kingdom – there’s a tragic difference, NHS “government care†isn’t universal at all when it comes to the ability of a physician to prescribe the most effective medicine for a patient – because they can’t choose from a “universe†of treatments.
Consider these paragraphs this from today’s New York Times:
Paying Patients Test British Health Care System
LONDON — Created 60 years ago as a cornerstone of the British welfare state, the National Health Service is devoted to the principle of free medical care for everyone. But recently it has been wrestling with a problem its founders never anticipated: how to handle patients with complex illnesses who want to pay for parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free from the health service.
Although the government is reluctant to discuss the issue, hopscotching back and forth between private and public care has long been standard here for those who can afford it. But a few recent cases have exposed fundamental contradictions between policy and practice in the system, and tested its founding philosophy to its very limits.
One such case was Debbie Hirst’s. Her breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist’s support, she decided last year to try to pay the $120,000 cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment.
By December, she had raised $20,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Mrs. Hirst heard the news from her doctor.
“He looked at me and said: ‘I’m so sorry, Debbie. I’ve had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,’ †Mrs. Hirst said in an interview. “I said, ‘Where does that leave me?’ He said, ‘If you pay for Avastin, you’ll have to pay for everything’ †-- in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.
Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.
Patients “cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the N.H.S. and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs,†the health secretary, Alan Johnson, told Parliament.
But Mrs. Hirst, 57, whose cancer was diagnosed in 1999, went to the news media, and so did other patients in similar situations. And it became clear that theirs were not isolated cases. In fact, patients, doctors and officials across the health care system widely acknowledge that patients suffering from every imaginable complaint regularly pay for some parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free.
“Of course it’s going on in the N.H.S. all the time, but a lot of it is hidden — it’s not explicit,†said Dr. Paul Charlson, a general practitioner in Yorkshire and a member of Doctors for Reform, a group that is highly critical of the health service. Last year, he was a co-author of a paper laying out examples of how patients with the initiative and the money dip in and out of the system, in effect buying upgrades to their basic free medical care.
“People swap from public to private sector all the time, and they’re topping up for virtually everything,†Dr. Charlson said in an interview. For instance, he said, a patient put on a five-month waiting list to see an orthopedic surgeon may pay $250 for a private consultation, and then switch back to the health service for the actual operation from the same doctor.
“Or they’ll buy an M.R.I. scan because the wait is so long, and then take the results back to the N.H.S.,†Dr. Charlson said.
In his paper, he also wrote about a 46-year-old woman with breast cancer who paid $250 for a second opinion when the health service refused to provide her with one; an elderly man who spent thousands of dollars on a new hearing aid instead of enduring a yearlong wait on the health service; and a 29-year-old woman who, with her doctor’s blessing, bought a three-month supply of Tarceva, a drug to treat pancreatic cancer, for more than $6,000 on the Internet because she could not get it through the N.H.S.
Asked why these were different from cases like Mrs. Hirst’s, a spokeswoman for the health service said no officials were available to comment.
Karol Sikora, a professor of cancer medicine at the Imperial College School of Medicine and one of Dr. Charlson’s co-authors, said that co-payments were particularly prevalent in cancer care. Armed with information from the Internet and patients’ networks, cancer patients are increasingly likely to demand, and pay for, cutting-edge drugs that the health service considers too expensive to be cost-effective.
“You have a population that is informed and consumerist about how it behaves about health care information, and an N.H.S. that can no longer afford to pay for everything for everybody,†he said.
In any case, he said, the health service is riddled with inequities. Some drugs are available in some parts of the country but not in others. Waiting lists for treatment vary wildly from place to place. Some regions spend $280 per capita on cancer care, Professor Sikora said, while others spend just $90.
But in a final irony, Mrs. Hirst was told early this month that her cancer had spread and that her condition had deteriorated so much that she could have the Avastin after all — paid for by the health service. In other words, a system that forbade her to buy the medicine earlier was now saying that she was so sick she could have it at public expense.
Mrs. Hirst is pleased, but up to a point. Avastin is not a cure, but a way to extend her life, perhaps only by several months, and she has missed valuable time. “It may be too bloody late,†she said.
Here’s a link to the complete article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/world/europe/21britain.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=avastin&st=nyt&oref=slogin
As our presidential candidates talk about health care reform here at home, let’s hold their feet to the fire over what “government care†really means.
We also sent our intrepid intern (dressed as a pill) out to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to ask average citizens the same question.
Here's a link to our podcast:
http://www.cmpi.org/OnthestreetDetail.asp?contentdetailid=595&contenttypeid=16
The answer is that the only difference is a rhetorical one.
But in the United Kingdom – there’s a tragic difference, NHS “government care†isn’t universal at all when it comes to the ability of a physician to prescribe the most effective medicine for a patient – because they can’t choose from a “universe†of treatments.
Consider these paragraphs this from today’s New York Times:
Paying Patients Test British Health Care System
LONDON — Created 60 years ago as a cornerstone of the British welfare state, the National Health Service is devoted to the principle of free medical care for everyone. But recently it has been wrestling with a problem its founders never anticipated: how to handle patients with complex illnesses who want to pay for parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free from the health service.
Although the government is reluctant to discuss the issue, hopscotching back and forth between private and public care has long been standard here for those who can afford it. But a few recent cases have exposed fundamental contradictions between policy and practice in the system, and tested its founding philosophy to its very limits.
One such case was Debbie Hirst’s. Her breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist’s support, she decided last year to try to pay the $120,000 cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment.
By December, she had raised $20,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Mrs. Hirst heard the news from her doctor.
“He looked at me and said: ‘I’m so sorry, Debbie. I’ve had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,’ †Mrs. Hirst said in an interview. “I said, ‘Where does that leave me?’ He said, ‘If you pay for Avastin, you’ll have to pay for everything’ †-- in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.
Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.
Patients “cannot, in one episode of treatment, be treated on the N.H.S. and then allowed, as part of the same episode and the same treatment, to pay money for more drugs,†the health secretary, Alan Johnson, told Parliament.
But Mrs. Hirst, 57, whose cancer was diagnosed in 1999, went to the news media, and so did other patients in similar situations. And it became clear that theirs were not isolated cases. In fact, patients, doctors and officials across the health care system widely acknowledge that patients suffering from every imaginable complaint regularly pay for some parts of their treatment while receiving the rest free.
“Of course it’s going on in the N.H.S. all the time, but a lot of it is hidden — it’s not explicit,†said Dr. Paul Charlson, a general practitioner in Yorkshire and a member of Doctors for Reform, a group that is highly critical of the health service. Last year, he was a co-author of a paper laying out examples of how patients with the initiative and the money dip in and out of the system, in effect buying upgrades to their basic free medical care.
“People swap from public to private sector all the time, and they’re topping up for virtually everything,†Dr. Charlson said in an interview. For instance, he said, a patient put on a five-month waiting list to see an orthopedic surgeon may pay $250 for a private consultation, and then switch back to the health service for the actual operation from the same doctor.
“Or they’ll buy an M.R.I. scan because the wait is so long, and then take the results back to the N.H.S.,†Dr. Charlson said.
In his paper, he also wrote about a 46-year-old woman with breast cancer who paid $250 for a second opinion when the health service refused to provide her with one; an elderly man who spent thousands of dollars on a new hearing aid instead of enduring a yearlong wait on the health service; and a 29-year-old woman who, with her doctor’s blessing, bought a three-month supply of Tarceva, a drug to treat pancreatic cancer, for more than $6,000 on the Internet because she could not get it through the N.H.S.
Asked why these were different from cases like Mrs. Hirst’s, a spokeswoman for the health service said no officials were available to comment.
Karol Sikora, a professor of cancer medicine at the Imperial College School of Medicine and one of Dr. Charlson’s co-authors, said that co-payments were particularly prevalent in cancer care. Armed with information from the Internet and patients’ networks, cancer patients are increasingly likely to demand, and pay for, cutting-edge drugs that the health service considers too expensive to be cost-effective.
“You have a population that is informed and consumerist about how it behaves about health care information, and an N.H.S. that can no longer afford to pay for everything for everybody,†he said.
In any case, he said, the health service is riddled with inequities. Some drugs are available in some parts of the country but not in others. Waiting lists for treatment vary wildly from place to place. Some regions spend $280 per capita on cancer care, Professor Sikora said, while others spend just $90.
But in a final irony, Mrs. Hirst was told early this month that her cancer had spread and that her condition had deteriorated so much that she could have the Avastin after all — paid for by the health service. In other words, a system that forbade her to buy the medicine earlier was now saying that she was so sick she could have it at public expense.
Mrs. Hirst is pleased, but up to a point. Avastin is not a cure, but a way to extend her life, perhaps only by several months, and she has missed valuable time. “It may be too bloody late,†she said.
Here’s a link to the complete article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/world/europe/21britain.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=avastin&st=nyt&oref=slogin
As our presidential candidates talk about health care reform here at home, let’s hold their feet to the fire over what “government care†really means.
One important point to clear up per the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision in the Medtronic pre-emption case -- when product manufacturers provide fraudulent information to FDA, or deliberately withhold information about safety problems associated with their products, preemption doesn’t offer them protection and they can and should be held accountable.
The problem is that the current liability system doesn’t reward lawyers who focus on these real public health concerns. Instead, the most experienced and well-financed law firms know that the biggest payouts regularly go to those who take advantage of the FDA’s best efforts to promote the safe and effective use of medications and medical technology. More and more often, these “mass tort†firms specialize in taking a new product warning label or withdrawal decision by the FDA, and view it as a signal to go forward with all guns blazing. Their bullets, unfortunately but not unpredictably, hit multiple innocent targets and result in a wounded American health care system.
Upon hearing the Court’s verdict, Senator Kennedy said, “In enacting legislation on medical devices, Congress never intended that F.D.A. approval would give blanket immunity to manufacturers from liability for injuries caused by faulty devices.†And Representative Waxman, America’s Oversighter-in-Chief commented that, “The Supreme Court’s decision strips consumers of the rights they’ve had for decades. 'This isn’t what Congress intended, and we’ll pass legislation as quickly as possible to fix this nonsensical situation."
“Nonsensical?†To the contrary, entirely sensical. Hence 8-1.
The problem is that the current liability system doesn’t reward lawyers who focus on these real public health concerns. Instead, the most experienced and well-financed law firms know that the biggest payouts regularly go to those who take advantage of the FDA’s best efforts to promote the safe and effective use of medications and medical technology. More and more often, these “mass tort†firms specialize in taking a new product warning label or withdrawal decision by the FDA, and view it as a signal to go forward with all guns blazing. Their bullets, unfortunately but not unpredictably, hit multiple innocent targets and result in a wounded American health care system.
Upon hearing the Court’s verdict, Senator Kennedy said, “In enacting legislation on medical devices, Congress never intended that F.D.A. approval would give blanket immunity to manufacturers from liability for injuries caused by faulty devices.†And Representative Waxman, America’s Oversighter-in-Chief commented that, “The Supreme Court’s decision strips consumers of the rights they’ve had for decades. 'This isn’t what Congress intended, and we’ll pass legislation as quickly as possible to fix this nonsensical situation."
“Nonsensical?†To the contrary, entirely sensical. Hence 8-1.
Diabetes Treatment Risk Not Found in 2nd Study
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; Page A03
"One week after U.S. researchers announced that pushing down blood sugar levels as close as possible to normal might be dangerous for high-risk diabetes patients, a preliminary analysis of a similar international study has found no such risk."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302722.html
I know why people died in the US study...more drug companies were involved.. More drug companies, more conflicts, more conflicts, less concern for patients. It's all so simple when you don't let science clog up your blog. And connecting the dots -- sort of like accusing someone of a crime without all the facts. Fun!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302722.html
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 14, 2008; Page A03
"One week after U.S. researchers announced that pushing down blood sugar levels as close as possible to normal might be dangerous for high-risk diabetes patients, a preliminary analysis of a similar international study has found no such risk."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302722.html
I know why people died in the US study...more drug companies were involved.. More drug companies, more conflicts, more conflicts, less concern for patients. It's all so simple when you don't let science clog up your blog. And connecting the dots -- sort of like accusing someone of a crime without all the facts. Fun!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302722.html
Are we devoid of any sense of irony?
Rob Stein of the Washington Post pens an article that begins:
One week after U.S. researchers announced that pushing down blood sugar levels as close as possible to normal might be dangerous for high-risk diabetes patients, a preliminary analysis of a similar international study has found no such risk.
And then two days ago writes with a surge of certainty and finality...
"A series of surprising findings about some of the most widely accepted assumptions in medicine has renewed debate about how aggressively doctors use drugs to prevent and treat some of the nation's leading health problems.
In addition to casting doubt on notions such as lowering cholesterol to prevent heart disease and normalizing blood sugar to protect diabetics, the studies involving well-known drugs such as Avandia and Vytorin have also rekindled concern about whether new medications are being tested adequately before being allowed on the market."
Diabetes and cholesterol drugs are the most widely and heavily studied drugs on the planet next to blood pressure meds. Should every one of those studies been done in clinical trials prior to market? And does Stein see the difference in how he covers the diabetes story --government studies -- and the Vytorin and Avandia cases? I bet he doesn't. What about the Avastin story, the drug left for dead by the FDA and Wall Street only to become a blockbuster?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302722.html
Science is full of surprises...that is the essence of it's enterprise. What's changed is we now have a Tabloid medicine industry comprised of the media, Congress, instant experts like Steve Nissen and nut cases on the Net that seizes on every surprise and turns it into a scandal that was deliberately "hidden" by those conflict-ridden types who conducted the experiment and by the FDA who knew but are too cozy with industry to care.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021801942.html
Rob Stein of the Washington Post pens an article that begins:
One week after U.S. researchers announced that pushing down blood sugar levels as close as possible to normal might be dangerous for high-risk diabetes patients, a preliminary analysis of a similar international study has found no such risk.
And then two days ago writes with a surge of certainty and finality...
"A series of surprising findings about some of the most widely accepted assumptions in medicine has renewed debate about how aggressively doctors use drugs to prevent and treat some of the nation's leading health problems.
In addition to casting doubt on notions such as lowering cholesterol to prevent heart disease and normalizing blood sugar to protect diabetics, the studies involving well-known drugs such as Avandia and Vytorin have also rekindled concern about whether new medications are being tested adequately before being allowed on the market."
Diabetes and cholesterol drugs are the most widely and heavily studied drugs on the planet next to blood pressure meds. Should every one of those studies been done in clinical trials prior to market? And does Stein see the difference in how he covers the diabetes story --government studies -- and the Vytorin and Avandia cases? I bet he doesn't. What about the Avastin story, the drug left for dead by the FDA and Wall Street only to become a blockbuster?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302722.html
Science is full of surprises...that is the essence of it's enterprise. What's changed is we now have a Tabloid medicine industry comprised of the media, Congress, instant experts like Steve Nissen and nut cases on the Net that seizes on every surprise and turns it into a scandal that was deliberately "hidden" by those conflict-ridden types who conducted the experiment and by the FDA who knew but are too cozy with industry to care.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021801942.html
Anna Mathews puff piece on Bart Stupak paints him as a sometimes overzealous crusader seeking to right wrongs at an out of control FDA...Good thing she didn't include this stirring Stupak statement -- from an LA Times article -- about why Andy von Eschenbach, Sandy Kweder, Janet Woodcock and the FDA's cafeteria guy should resign...
"The drug companies know that this administration ... will do nothing to them. There is no fear of the FDA. With this culture with laissez faire oversight and regulation, I think they should be gone. If we get rid of them, it will put the drug companies on notice."
Is there such a thing as laissez faire regulation?
Last time I checked, drug approvals were at an all-time low and the percentage of IND getting through the FDA had gone from 11 percent to 8 percent over a ten year period. The percent of drugs withdrawn has remained the same over that same time period. Laissez faire?
Oh and has anyone given one tenth of the coverage to the fact that the NIH pulled the plug on the ACCORD study that killed people compared to the ENHANCE trial that did not? In both cases the protocols were changed midstream and ACCORD even had a data safety monitoring board.
I don't see Stupak holding a hearing on that. Maybe it's not a case of laissez faire regulation. Or maybe it's just that you get less media coverage.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120347636748679131.html?mod=home_health_right
"The drug companies know that this administration ... will do nothing to them. There is no fear of the FDA. With this culture with laissez faire oversight and regulation, I think they should be gone. If we get rid of them, it will put the drug companies on notice."
Is there such a thing as laissez faire regulation?
Last time I checked, drug approvals were at an all-time low and the percentage of IND getting through the FDA had gone from 11 percent to 8 percent over a ten year period. The percent of drugs withdrawn has remained the same over that same time period. Laissez faire?
Oh and has anyone given one tenth of the coverage to the fact that the NIH pulled the plug on the ACCORD study that killed people compared to the ENHANCE trial that did not? In both cases the protocols were changed midstream and ACCORD even had a data safety monitoring board.
I don't see Stupak holding a hearing on that. Maybe it's not a case of laissez faire regulation. Or maybe it's just that you get less media coverage.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120347636748679131.html?mod=home_health_right
No, not a new horror movie, a new op-ed from today's edition of The Detroit News:
Bureaucrats threaten personalized medical breakthroughs
American health care has come to a fork in the road.
On the one hand, science is opening up exciting possibilities. The booming field of "personalized" medicine recognizes that every one of us is unique -- not just in some sort of philosophical sense, but in the ways we get sick and the ways we get better.
Personalized medicine can size up our gene sequences to find out what ailments we're likely to get, and even prescribe preventative treatment.
Cancer doctors can now look for "biomarkers" on proteins to detect disease early and determine which treatments are most likely to work.
And this same science can help our doctors understand what medicines are wrong for us, avoiding unnecessary pain, suffering - and expense.
Unfortunately, just as these groundbreaking therapies are coming within reach of consumers, politicians and bureaucrats are threatening to make them off limits. As science makes ever-more-targeted treatment possible, politics could drag us right back to a one-size-fits-all system."
Here's the rest of the story:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080220/OPINION01/802200397/1008
And to further entice you, here's the concluding paragraph:
We hear a lot about sustainability these days. We want our ecosystem and our economy to be hale and hearty over the long term. But we also need a health care system that creates sustainable individuals. A market-driven system can do that, by bringing all the latest treatments to the public and letting competition drive down prices. Bureaucracies, by contrast, are mainly in the business of sustaining themselves. A move to government health care will take us down the wrong path.
Bureaucrats threaten personalized medical breakthroughs
American health care has come to a fork in the road.
On the one hand, science is opening up exciting possibilities. The booming field of "personalized" medicine recognizes that every one of us is unique -- not just in some sort of philosophical sense, but in the ways we get sick and the ways we get better.
Personalized medicine can size up our gene sequences to find out what ailments we're likely to get, and even prescribe preventative treatment.
Cancer doctors can now look for "biomarkers" on proteins to detect disease early and determine which treatments are most likely to work.
And this same science can help our doctors understand what medicines are wrong for us, avoiding unnecessary pain, suffering - and expense.
Unfortunately, just as these groundbreaking therapies are coming within reach of consumers, politicians and bureaucrats are threatening to make them off limits. As science makes ever-more-targeted treatment possible, politics could drag us right back to a one-size-fits-all system."
Here's the rest of the story:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080220/OPINION01/802200397/1008
And to further entice you, here's the concluding paragraph:
We hear a lot about sustainability these days. We want our ecosystem and our economy to be hale and hearty over the long term. But we also need a health care system that creates sustainable individuals. A market-driven system can do that, by bringing all the latest treatments to the public and letting competition drive down prices. Bureaucracies, by contrast, are mainly in the business of sustaining themselves. A move to government health care will take us down the wrong path.
The Tufts Center for Drug Development -- enemy territory for drugwonks because of its concentration of RedSox rooters -- held a session on business models to improve R and D productivity recently...The takeaway point:
“No company – big, medium, or small pharma, or biotech – will develop new drugs entirely alone,” claimed the Center’s director, Kenneth Kaitin, at a recent panel meeting of industry executives in the US.
“Increasingly, R&D productivity gains will depend on developers focusing on what they contribute best to the drug development value chain and partnering with organisations that provide capabilities that are too expensive to develop or maintain internally, or are outside of the company’s core competence,” he added.
Read More
Meanwhile the Institute on Medicine as Profession, which is leading the purge of all contacts between industry and academia has a new program designed to cut the private sector out of drug development altogether. It is being lead by one of the leaders in drug discovery, David Rothman, PhD. ....Where would the government -- yes the government would be in charge -- get the money? What's in your wallet?
Read More
“No company – big, medium, or small pharma, or biotech – will develop new drugs entirely alone,” claimed the Center’s director, Kenneth Kaitin, at a recent panel meeting of industry executives in the US.
“Increasingly, R&D productivity gains will depend on developers focusing on what they contribute best to the drug development value chain and partnering with organisations that provide capabilities that are too expensive to develop or maintain internally, or are outside of the company’s core competence,” he added.
Read More
Meanwhile the Institute on Medicine as Profession, which is leading the purge of all contacts between industry and academia has a new program designed to cut the private sector out of drug development altogether. It is being lead by one of the leaders in drug discovery, David Rothman, PhD. ....Where would the government -- yes the government would be in charge -- get the money? What's in your wallet?
Read More
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.
