We’ve heard a lot over the years about the inappropriate role of lawyers in the medical system. The complaints usually center on trial lawyers who sue physicians for malpractice and drug companies for failure to warn consumers about unsafe drugs and devices. We’ve heard much less about lawyers who work for drug companies and try to game the regulatory system.
Gooz News
Accelerated Approval at Stake — FDA
The Avastin hearing has been organized like a trial: the FDA this morning presented its case, and Roche/Genentech, the manufacturer of Avastin, will get to cross-examine the government "witnesses" this afternoon. The roles will be reversed tomorrow.
Nothing presented by the government this morning was surprising. There was no evidence in the five trials testing Avastin in metastatic breast cancer patients since the 2008 accelerated approval to suggest that the drug lengthens lives or even lengthened the time to progression of the cancer in a meaningful way.
Less education, more cancer
A new study from the American Cancer Society shows that people with only a high school education are nearly three times more likely to die from cancer than people with college and advanced degrees. From the Associated Press story:
Commercial Speech Trumps Privacy When It Comes to Drug Marketing
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that states can’t pass laws like one in Vermont that prevent drug companies from gaining access to the prescribing records of physicians. Pharmaceutical firms use these records to determine which doctors should be bombarded with detailers and marketing messages to beef up sales of broadly prescribed drugs like anti-depressants, anti-pain pills, cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-control meds.
GAO: FDA can’t monitor device recalls
The Government Accountability Office has weighed in on the failure of the Food and Drug Administration to properly monitor medical device recalls. Its review of the 3,510 recalls between 2005 and 2009 — 40 percent of which were cardiovascular radiological or orthopedic devices — found:
Is TV Killing Us?
Peter Diamond for Chief Economic Adviser
Austan Goolsbee, who’s been President Obama’s chief economic adviser since he entered the Senate in 2004, is returning to the University of Chicago. As chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, he’s been an able spokesperson for the administration’s desperate moves to save the economy from entering a second great depression. And while his cheerleading for long-term investments in education and infrastructure makes sense, it’s not exactly a message that provides immediate hope for the long-term jobless, who increasingly make up the 9.1 percent of Americans who are unemployed.
Misinformation About IPAB
Vouchercare for Cancer
The health care cost debate takes place on two stages using two languages, one scientific, the other economic. The net result is a failure to communicate.
Cancer and cell phones: The role of conflicted science
Health care: Experts Blast Ryan’s Attack on IPAB
In defending his controversial proposal to turn Medicare into premium support for buying private insurance, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Meet the Press last Sunday took a potshot at the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is the key cost control component of President Obama’s health care reform law.