Let’s say drugX works well enough on 85% of patients and drugY works well enough on 5% of patients. It’s better to have both drugs available than just the one that treats the majority of patients.
The FDA also increasingly allows drugmakers to claim success in trials based on proxy measurements — such as shrunken tumors — instead of clinical outcomes like survival rates or cures, which take more time to evaluate. In return for accelerated approval, drug companies commit to researching how well their drugs work after going on the market. But these post-marketing studies can take 10 years or longer to complete, leaving patients and doctors with lingering questions about safety and benefit.
So what, there's going to be a 10 year period where patients are unable to evaluate what their best shot at treatment is? We often forget that markets and rational decision-making require good information to produce good outcomes. Allowing drugs into the market that are opaque and expensive isn't going to make things better for patients, it's going to make it worse.
I mean, there is no way that can be true, is there? The FDA is allowing private, for-profit companies (many with an already checkered past) to utilize citizens as their motherfucking lab rats? Ummmmmmmm.....no way.
Don't we (the people, right?) get to vote on this or something? This doesn't seem very just.