re: Why Should You Pay $100,000 a Year For a Cancer Drug -- Is This Extortion?

rsj — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:35:22 GMT

I work in clinical cancer research, and part of my job is handling reports of the side effects of cancer treatments. For Avastin we get piles and piles of such reports, probably more than for any of the other drugs we deal with, and according to the manufacturer, most of those reactions are anticipated for that drug.

These anticipated side effects include not only vomiting, diarrhea, headache, hair loss and the like, but also holes in the gut, serious damage to just about every organ (including failure), hemorrhaging, stroke… in fact, it’s more a question of what harm it DOESN’T do. Even sudden death is “anticipated”. And one of my nurse colleagues calls it “a drug looking for a disease”, because they throw it at virtually every cancer just hoping the results will be more favorable than harmful.

The idea of it is to starve the cancer cells to death by stopping blood getting to them, which is great in theory – but in practice there can be so many catastrophic side effects that you can’t help wondering if it’s worth it.