03 - FDA Rally: Tear Down This Wall! (CTL)

Frank Burroughs lost his daughter to cancer when she was just 21 because, he says, the FDA blocked her from getting Erbitux, a promising new, experimental treatment that was later FDA approved. In this video of a rally in front of the FDA on September 18, 2007 he calls out, "Dr. von Eschenbach, tear down this wall!"

TAGS: Care to Live & Abigail Alliance

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Provenge
• Junovan
• Genesense
• promising
• treatments
• access
• terminally
• ill
• late-stage
• die
• death
• hope

[seasickinspithead]

Allowing access to drugs before FDA approval is dangerous, even if the drugs are shown to work. The people who are given access have to pay for the drug. This discourages the drug companies from fully ensuring a drug is safe. Why would they test a drug fully if they could sell it before approval?

This is a sad story, but we must remember that there is a reason for regulations and phases of drug testing.

[Thurly]

In balancing the risks and rewards of conditional approval, remember that the patients have run out of treatment options, are fast running out of time and that the FDA can recind the treatment's marketing approval if the clinical trials aren't completed in a timely manner.

[42519941307]

Oh, come on! I feel badly for Abigail, it was a shame that she died so young, but how can you seriously think that people have these rights? There are about 5000 drugs recieved by the FDA each year, and only one makes it to the market. ONLY ONE is safe enough. Do you think it is safe to let people try all the other 4999 very dangerous and ineffective drugs? Is that really a right, or a want?

[Thurly]

Your argument is, IMO, extreme. The Abigail Alliance doesn't advocate for access to ALL drugs in development, only those that have shown substantial promise of safety and efficacy for victims who are in the terminal phase of their disease and only in the case where there are no FDA approved alternatives. Nobody is advocating recklessness -- just common sense. View my video from Bruce Tower, a prostate cancer victim with late stage disease, for perspective on balancing risks and rewards.

[Thurly]

This video has been posted twice -- with different tags.

This video directs viewers to Abigail Alliance and Care to Live.

[achchhaa]

Members of the FDA that are responsible for the Delay of any Cancer Treatment should be held criminally liable for their actions!

[az09abcdefg]

Shame shame on the FDA.

I understand they are making the same mistake over and over and that currently it is prostate cancer patients who are the FDA victims now, as they are being denied Provenge!

[42519941307]

In the Renaissance, treatment would have been a witch doctor. I think things are a LITTLE better than that now.

[42519941307]

To be completely honest, I made that comment almost a year ago. I really don't remember much from the case; we were doing it for school. I realize that the FDA holds back drugs that can be effective, but there has to be some risk to those drugs otherwise they would be put on the market. Is it really better that people get hurt from these drugs and then sue the companies? And also, I'm only 14, so give me a break. I am entitled to an opinion.

[geof1277]

Further, when I called the FDA years ago about my boss, mentioned in another comment below, I learned that they themselves are aware of their severe shortcomings in approving drugs and patients' rights. It is the patient's right to his/her life, not the FDA's. Nanotechnology holds the greatest promise. So does this device that a leukemia patient invented. It's imperative both proceed w/o the FDA's literal death grip on people's lives. The FDA's jobs program on the backs of the sick must stop.

[geof1277]

This is a ludicrous argument. Are you saying that the current way is the ONLY way? Current regulations and drug testing are out of control. There are many examples of other countries who have approved drugs long before the U.S. and then, after countless Americans dead, the drug is approved in the U.S. There are regulations, and then there is a jobs program and that is what the FDA ultimately is. We are nearing 2010 and cancer patients have Renaissance torture devices masquerading as "treatment".

[geof1277]

Safe enough? Do you consider poison, i.e. chemo safe? Cancer patients have 3 choices of "treatment" - burn, slash and poison. My boss had lymphoma. Bexxar wasn't approved then but studies indicated that taking it before chemo would much increase its effectiveness. But he was forced to go through chemo first, struggled hard to get into a trial, and finally got Bexxar but it was too late. There are many safe and effective drugs that the FDA refuses to allow people to take. That is criminal.