Debates over the experimental prostate cancer vaccine Provenge (made by small biotech firm Dendreon) have become so intense that two doctors requested bodyguards after receiving threats following their advising the FDA to delay approval (Washington Post).
Dendreon's stock prices quadrupled after the company submitted the application for Provenge, but prices nose-dived when the FDA delayed approval (WaPo). Blogger comments at ProvenceNow.org. (a website launched to support approval of Provenge) suggest that multiple interests are clashing:
Comment #7: "If you had cancer would you like to wait and see? I think not. You would be one of those patients that moan the loudest."
Comment #8: "Isn’t our country about free enterprise. If the FDA finds its role in profit protection, then what do small companies or individual researchers have as incentive to provide exceptional cures...."
Comment #9: "Anyone who really wants to try Provenge can do so right now with the phase III trial currently underway. Access is not a problem. I suspect you are mostly sour investors who lost your shirt in this. You should have taken profit in the 20’s and headed for the exits until final word came from the FDA...."
Number 7 illustrates the perspective of terminally ill patients who have nothing to lose by trying an experimental drug. Number 8 seems more focused on investments than health issues.
I can't tell whose interests Number 9 illustrates. On one hand, he or she was thoughtful enough to alert cancer patients of the opportunity to try Provenge. On the other hand, he or she seemed to delight in Number 8's investment woes.
The overall debate includes accusations that the FDA is shafting Dandreon to protect a larger drug company's profits. I haven't seen the name of that larger drug company (or its competing drug) but it's not a farfetched notion, given the FDA's apparent record of putting big drug companies' profits over even patients' health.
A Harvard expert on healthcare politics said the Provenge case "may be different and all the more controversial because it's at the intersection of patient advocacy and the nervous world of biotech investors.... It makes for much more volatile politics" (WaPo).
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