Only One Law For All Of Us
But the party that wants equal health-care access for all knows how to work it. Multi-million $$$ donor to Dems/Edwards mistress bailout financier Fred Baron gets deathbed access to the experimental drug Tysabri after the FDA clears the way. Bill Clinton, Ted K, Lance Armstrong and John Kerry all weighed in for him. Biogen had turned him down, saying there were regulatory restrictions on giving him the experimental, unapproved drug outside of controlled research, and he was a bad candidate. Dallas Morning News:
Dallas lawyer and Democratic Party fundraiser Fred Baron has won his fight to gain access to an experimental cancer drug, according to an e-mail sent out by his son late Thursday afternoon.
According to the e-mail from Andrew Baron, his father was given the drug, called Tysabri, in hopes that it would reverse what doctors say is an otherwise incurable case of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.
Tysabri has been approved to treat multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease but not cancer. Researchers began preliminary clinical trials testing the drug on patients with multiple myeloma only six weeks ago and don’t yet know whether it works.
The drug is not available to other cancer patients without the permission of the manufacturer, Biogen Idec. As of Wednesday night, the company was refusing to give that permission. A Biogen spokeswoman said that allowing Mr. Baron to use the drug could jeopardize its use by thousands of other people.
But Mr. Baron’s family enlisted some of their well-known friends to lobby the company. The list included Lance Armstrong, the bicyclist and cancer survivor; Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton; Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass; and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who has brain cancer.
Andrew Baron, founder of the Web video company Rocketboom, posted a letter with details of his father’s condition on his personal blog. His plea that his father be allowed to get Tysabri was picked up by the online technology community, which posted links on several other well-known blogs.
Andrew Baron sent out a brief note late Thursday afternoon:
“Thanks to the persistence and hard work of so many friends, Frederick has received Tysabri. The Mayo Clinic working with the FDA found a legal basis for this use. We have every expectation of a positive result.”
Access to the drug was not granted by Biogen, a company spokeswoman said.
“The FDA did notify us late yesterday they were working directly with the Mayo Clinic to try and resolve the situation,” Naomi Aoki said. “It wasn’t through us.”
via Houston Chron, the FDA says “no preferential treatment.”
Bloomberg: FDA’s authorization was under a provision for compassionate use. That’s great. No information on how many people with multiple myeloma out there are dying compassion-free.
Topics: everything
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:08 pm Comments (2) on Thursday, October 16, 2008
2 Responses to “Only One Law For All Of Us”
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October 17th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Some animals are more equal than others.
October 19th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
An “incurable case” – so far all cases of multiple myeloma are incurabel. It’s in incurable disease. Those of us with who have it will remember to call on these same people to pled our case.