[Editor’s Note: We asked selected Xconomists a series of questions designed to zero in on the big issues of the year, including “What would you be willing to throw a punch over?”]
It takes a lot to get me riled-up—I’m overly rational, if anything. Outside of the bad behavior we were supposed to outgrow in kindergarten—dishonesty, disrespect, etc.—there are few professional issues of sufficient emotional magnitude. One of the most frustrating issues today is the FDA situation. While easy to say, “The FDA is at fault and needs to be reformed in order to speed the approval of new medicines,” that is a dramatic oversimplification of the problem. All parties in the ecosystem are at fault to some extent, and it will take concerted efforts and change by each in order to fix it.
For example, the FDA has absolutely been more/overly safety conscious in recent years, but I believe we all would act that way if faced with being hauled in front of Congress to justify the risk-benefit of a drug approval that positively impacts more than 99.99 percent of the people who use it. Why should we, as a country, require or expect that medicines be as safe as clean water? At the core, sick people, whether with cardiovascular issues, autoimmune disease, or other afflictions, are taking a medicine in order to improve their condition, so while absolutely safe drugs would be wonderful, a level of risk is warranted based on the improvement in the disease. If we can cross that bridge and accept that medicines will have risks, then we have the tools to deal with the safety vs. speed of approval conundrum. We can shorten commercialization timelines while dramatically improving safety monitoring if we test for efficacy and major safety during development, while tracking long-tail safety issues in the commercial setting—perhaps the first 100,000 people prescribed a new product?
