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"No man is an island, entire of itself ... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
John Donne (1572-1631)
Those of us who are dying of cancer did not (as did homosexuals demanding to serve OPENLY in the military) get good news this week.
Peter Ferrara, writing in The American Spectator yesterday gave us the bad news about the undeniability of the existence of death panels.
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked its regulatory approval of the drug Avastin to treat late stage, metastatic breast cancer. Each year, the practicing oncologists chosen by 17,500 American women to save them from their life-threatening, heavily progressed cancer prescribe Avastin to treat them.
The FDA explained that it was revoking approval of the drug for that use because it decided that the drug does not provide "a sufficient benefit in slowing disease progression to outweigh the significant risk to patients." Risk? The drug is prescribed for women who are otherwise going to die from cancer unless the drug saves them at least for a time. The far greater risk to these women is from the FDA, not the drug.
As The Wall Street Journal said last Friday in response to the FDA's explanation:
Ponder that [word] "sufficient." The agency is substituting its own judgment about clinical meaningfulness for those of practicing oncologists and terminally ill cancer patients.
That FDA judgment was determined last summer by an internal agency panel of 13 experts, only two of whom were breast cancer oncologists, and none of whom were breast cancer patients.
Ferrara goes on to recount the plight of a Mrs. Turnage, who could possibly be the first victim of Obamacare's Death Panels. The rest of us have to wonder when our drugs will be deemed by the FDA's "internal agency panel of experts" to not provide "a sufficient benefit in slowing disease progression to outweigh the significant risk to patients."
For a previous post on Death Panels, go here.
