Avastin

Barack Obama - Budget - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - FDA - Government - Health - Liberals - Medicaid - Medicare - President - Regulation - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

FDA: Dec. 17, Countdown to a Death Panel for Breast Cancer Drug Avastin

December 15, 2010 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a few days the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to release its final decision on whether or not 17,000 women across the country will have the same access to the breast cancer drug Avastin that they now have. Several congressmen, thousands of doctors and patients, and many small government activists stand against this perceived example of Obamacare-like rationing.

As I reported last week, with this Avastin situation five Congressmen have become alerted to the threat that government is instituting cost-based rationing of healthcare and have become alarmed at the effects that will have on the sick. It seems that this FDA decision will set the table for the rationing war to come under Obamacare unless that legislation is repealed or inhibited.

Avastin is, admittedly, an expensive drug. But are we ready for government to decide if your lifesaving medicines are “too expensive” to be allowed for use? Is that the cost-based road down which we wish to travel? And how far down that road do we go? How much cost-cutting do we want government to indulge where it concerns our health? And should government even have that role in the first place?

These are questions that the Avastin decision evokes.
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FDA: Dec. 17, Countdown to a Death Panel for Breast Cancer Drug Avastin”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Capitalism - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - FDA - Government - Health - Liberals - President - Regulation - Warner Todd Huston

FDA Set To Cut Off 17,000 Women Annually From Lifesaving Drug

December 8, 2010 by 7 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is due to take up the case of Avastin, a cancer drug that successfully treats some 17,000 women annually. With a coming December 17 decision, the FDA seems poised to take this drug away from these patients quite despite the fact that their doctors find the drug effective.

The most dangerous period of time in Washington D.C. is that time we call the lame duck session (I call it the zombie congress; dead men walking). It is that time when those elected officials that are about to be ingloriously shipped off home for the last time due to losing election results make a mad scramble to grab for as much as they can get.

In the case of regulatory agencies like the FDA the lame duck session is not treated in exactly the same manner, but it is sure that when congress is about to have its majority party change over with the president’s party on the losing side of the switch, regulatory agencies often try to push through favored policies before the new congress is seated and before that new congress is in a position to put any pressure on those agencies to prevent them from pushing the president’s agenda.
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FDA Set To Cut Off 17,000 Women Annually From Lifesaving Drug”

Business - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - FDA - Free Trade - Government - Health - Liberals - President - Regulation - Warner Todd Huston

During Breast Cancer Month Obama’s FDA Ponders Delisting Cancer Drug

October 27, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

So you have Avastin, a drug used to treat breast cancer that has a record of extending the lives of sufferers for at least five and a half months, and it’s October, the month declared Breast Cancer Awareness Month. If you are the Obama Federal Drug Administration, what do you do? Apparently you look to delist the drug.

This October the FDA is trying to decide to delist Avastin because in keeping with its new Obamacare rationing impulses it has decided Avastin costs too much.

In September the FDA announced that it was going to delay its final decision perhaps until December on whether or not to take Avastin off the market for breast cancer patients. There was no clear indication of just when the decision would be made, but conveniently the decision certainly will be delayed until after the coming elections. As a result President Obama won’t have to worry about taking a drug away from breast cancer patients in the midst of an election cycle.

The calculation of skipping past the elections is hard to ignore.
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During Breast Cancer Month Obama’s FDA Ponders Delisting Cancer Drug”

Barack Obama - Biology - Budget - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - FDA - Freedom - Government - Health - Law - Liberals - Medicine - President - Science - Warner Todd Huston

Feds Deciding When Healthcare Science Costs Too Much To Save Lives

October 22, 2010 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

If anyone wants a current example of what is looming ahead for medical science at the hands of Obamacare, the Avastin controversy is a perfect one. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to de-list the cancer drug Avastin one reason being that it is a drug too expensive for government to fund. It is scary to think that the federal government can summarily dismiss cancer drugs merely because of expense, but that is what happens when government starts counting the beans. It becomes an issue of cost instead of effectiveness.

There were other reasons that the FDA wants to dump Avastin, but cost was one of them. One of those that sat in judgment of Avastin admitted that cost was a factor in the decision to delegitimize the treatment. Natalie Compagni Portis, a member of one of the panels that the FDA convened to investigate the drug, said, “We aren’t supposed to talk about cost, but that’s another issue.”
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Feds Deciding When Healthcare Science Costs Too Much To Save Lives”