Monday, September 20, 2010

BRIAN DARLING GETS IT WRONG AGAIN

In a post on Red State, Darling says the FDA withdrew approval of the drug Avastin for treating breast cancer because of cost. Here's the truth:
The panel’s new recommendation came on the heels of new data showing that Avastin did not extend the survival of patients with advanced breast cancer. (In cancer trials, the length of a patient’s life on a given treatment is the accepted gold standard for measuring a treatment’s effectiveness.) In the Avastin trial, called AVADO, patients treated with placebo and Taxotere, another cancer drug, lived for 31.9 months on average; whereas patients treated with Avastin and Taxotere lived for 30.8 months at a low Avastin dose and 30.2 months at a high Avastin dose. Understandably, the FDA’s advisory committee saw this data as evidence that Avastin didn’t offer a real benefit to breast cancer patients.

I wouldn't know about this if I weren't listening to a local re-broadcast of John Gibson's radio show. Naturally, Gibson reported that Darling was correct.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Susan Komen agrees with Darling:

http://ww5.komen.org/KomenNewsArticle.aspx?id=6442452367