Re: of interest
Articles such as this fail to state that while some patients see benefit's in months, others are living for years both with, and without continued treatment.
Last night at a benefit for City of Hope I met a young lady who as a child was determined to have brain cancer, other places gave her no chance at life. Today she's cancer free and every year she comes in one day for a battery of tests which she told me take all day. She described her treatment, and how all patients are treated there. I have little doubt that if her treatment wasn't subsidized by all the fundraising done for research at places like COH, she'd not be alive today as much that was done for her was truly experimental.
While I suspect that Roche in individual cases will provide Kadcyla for far less than the list price, possibly for free, I can also understand their position. I won't say I completely agree with it, but I do understand it. My big problem with big Pharma is that they're not doing all the research they'd love us to believe they are. Take Kadcyla, it's basis is Herceptin which wasn't developed by Roche or Genentech, it was developed at City of Hope. That's true of many of the biggest sellers from the big Pharma's. The likes of COH and other research institutions as well as many tiny biotechs are providing the development, while big Pharma pays for the expensive trials that the FDA requires. If bringing drug prices down is a priority in Britain, or here, what's needed is to bring down the costs of the trials. Who knows, the day may come where big Pharma isn't needed as biotechs and even research institutions can afford to take their drugs to approval, and contract for their manufacture.
Gary