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Premature medication

Handing out experimental drugs to desperate patients is not a good idea, says Apoorva Mandavilli.
At first glance it seems only kind and right to let people with serious illnesses take whatever medicines they want. Some have campaigned so hard for this that the US Food and Drug Administration agreed on 11 December to let patients buy experimental drugs direct from the manufacturer when there are no other options available.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on December 22, 2006 06:00 PM |

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The AIDS treatment activist experience is overflowing with real world examples of where accelerated access to experiental drugs therapies back-fired. In fact, I cannot think of any cases where early access ultimately saved any life.

Early access to stavudine (BMS's Zerit), soft-gel saquinavir (Roche's Invirase) and even AZT (GSK's Retrovir), for varying reasons, actually ended up hurting patients: AZT because the proper dose had not yet been established (which ended up being a quarter or less than the initial dose -- and patients died of anemia faster than they did of HIV); saquinavir because the pharmacokinetics were not well established and blood levels of the drug ended up suboptial and quickly lead to cross class resistance in many patients; stavudine because serious and mostly irreversible long-term toxicites were not fully appreciated.

I could go on, as could many of us. The doubts raised in this excellent review are both real and oftentimes irrevocable.

Posted by: Mike Barr | December 27, 2006 05:11 PM

How correctly to establish a problem with blood? There Are methods of treatment without blood transfusion? WBR LeoP

Posted by: Online pharmacy | March 3, 2007 11:08 AM

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