Alex Tabarrok Quotes

I keep encouraging the pharmaceutical companies to put more money into R&D.

If you go to the FDA with a drug that's only meant to treat 50 people, and it's a 95 percent cure rate, you'll get your drug approved.

I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.

Would-be drug companies must either produce medicines that stand up to federal scrutiny, demonstrate that their data has value to other companies, or go out of business.

I think FDA's concerns are patient-safety.

Efforts to approach zero risk through exhaustive pre-release testing are extremely expensive and time-consuming. New drugs are delayed in reaching those who need them, and marginal drugs may not be developed at all.

We should look for ways to expedite generic drug approvals, particularly for products that have a long history of being safe and effective.

Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration have a tough job.

Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can be disastrous and result in countless more deaths.

The problem we are trying to solve is that of drugs that would have never seen the light of day for reasons that have nothing to do with the inherent properties of drug candidates themselves and more to do with bureaucratic institutions within which they often sit.

While I am prepared to look at all options and to think 'outside the box' for effective treatments, I rightly resisted efforts to provide an unproven drug on demand to the American public.

We all want our drugs to be safe - and so an essential part of the pathway to the development of a new drug is approval by a regulator.

I've heard drug experts say they believe if penicillin were discovered today, the FDA wouldn't license it.

Consider the clinicaltrials by which drugs are tested in human subjects.5 Before a new drug can enter the market, its manufacturer must sponsor clinicaltrials to show the Food and Drug Administration that the drug is safe and effective, usually as compared with a placebo or dummy pill. The results of all the trials (there may be many) are submitted to the FDA, and if one or two trials are positive—that is, they show effectiveness without serious risk—the drug is usually approved, even if all the other trials are negative.

On the third stage is used for medicine, it is not known to the public.

Over the years, HIV/AIDS activists and their allies have been pioneers in creating new frontiers in the medical establishment. Through their efforts, the FDA drug approval procedures were reformed so promising new therapies could reach desperate patients quicker.

When you prescribe a new drug, often you are prescribing something that has only been tested in a few thousand people for a very short period of time, perhaps only six months, and that's not long enough to know whether there are any medium- or long-term side effects.

Now, what tends to happen is that the stories get hyped. And the medicines are not quite as revolutionary and as dramatic as they seem to be. But, certainly, various phases of this problem are being attacked by the pharmaceutical companies.

In general, drug companies are reasonably good at developing new treatments, and there's also a lot of good in the industry.

It's time to stop defending a system that is clearly in dire need of reform, stop issuing reports and setting up new roadblocks, and start providing Americans with prescription drugs that are both safe and affordable.

Medicines are unusual commodities. Important drugs can save the lives and protect the health of millions. Their consumption can bring huge benefits, by helping patients to avoid infection and preventing serious damage to the economies of families, nations and even humanity at large.

Paradoxically, no such embargo exists for the drugs and therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of serious diseases although many of them were created with the same technologies.

The United States government approaches patient choice in medication as Singapore does free speech: its pronouncements sound reasonable and tolerant until you threaten its prerogatives.

The public properly relies upon FDA classification of drugs as nonprescription as a reflection of the agency's judgment regarding the safety and proper use of a drug without a doctor's prescription.

The United States has an active pharmaceutical industry that has brought huge benefits to the U.S. public. Most Americans, who benefit from these advances, have little understanding of how difficult it is to create an important new medical therapy and make it available to improve public health.