[T]his study compares the number of new oncology drugs approved by each agency and their review times. Of 33 new oncology drugs, 30 were approved in the United States, 26 in the European Community, and 24 in Canada between 2003 and 2011. The median review times (the time within which 50% of the drugs were approved) of these drugs were 182 days in the United States, 410 days in Europe, and 356 days in Canada.
Full report here.
Not to mention the truly scandalous situation with regard to the extremely limited availability of PET. PET + MRI can give a very detailed picture of a tumour.
We promised you ‘free’ health care. We didn’t promise you good or effective health care.
Does this report suggest unreasonable delays in Canada and Europe, or that perhaps the USA rushes things?
Djb – Or do the waiting times indicate all countries take far too long? By the time clinical trials are done, the FDA has been looking at the compound for YEARS.
State of the art cancer drugs are expensive, and this is one way the single payer countries could avoid paying for those expensive compounds – just sit on them, for as long as possible.
As Jack Layton discovered, Canada’s cancer treatment regime is not ideal.
If you knew what I knew about the FDA approval process and how it currently works… you would avoid all drugs approved in the last 10 years.
What John Lewis said…
In talking with one of the oncologists a few months back, his opinion was that we have so many new cancer drugs available now that it’s hard to keep up with them all. I gave up trying to keep up with anti-cancer drugs years ago.
Based on what I see clinically, people seem to be dying just as quickly with all the new drugs as they were before they existed. The only progress we’ve made in cancer is in treating leukemia’s and lymphoma’s where some of the leukemic cancers which were almost universally fatal 20 years ago now can be easily treated. We’re nowhere near being able to do that for the majority of cancers.
The HPB is well known in taking forever to approve drugs and, IMO, people should be allowed to try anything they want for cancer. This was the argument used for HIV drugs which 20 years ago was universally fatal in a short period of time. While I support people trying the drugs they want, the cost of the drug should be borne by the patient. Some of the new monoclonal antibodies are thousands of dollars/dose. Once they’re shown to be effective they are covered under medicare.
Socialist medical systems, for their survival, depend on people reliably dropping dead at a certain point in their life. If we had a cure for cancer, then healthcare costs would go through the roof as these people developed other diseases needing expensive treatment as they grew older. Rather than recognize this fact statists choose to put the blame on “overpaid doctors”; this does have a twisted logic to it as if people can’t see doctors then they’re much more likely to drop dead quickly.
More government does not mean -better- government.
With the degree of political corruption in the Democrat party I am not sure the number of drugs being approved or the time frame of said approvals is indicative of better health care. I suspect some of those drug approvals were ‘fixed’ by the Democrats when the drug company kicked a few million Obambam’s way.
What Jeremy said.. Do not assume any kind of sincere scientific process demonstrating efficacy and saftey. The drug industry is crony capitalism at its best – or worst, depnding on your perspective. I am always amazed at the naivete of some of my fellow conservatives on this issue. It is no exageration to say it is likely the majority of medications people are buying are good old fashioned snake oil with potent, and frequent life altering side effect profiles. Natural remedies, for the most part are even more useless though I suppose less likely to ruin or kill you.