Firms fight move to obtain cheap anti-blindness drug Avastin (UK Guardian)

[DemoTex]

The NHS has moved a step closer to obtaining a cheap drug to prevent the leading cause of blindness, in spite of attempts by drug companies to block it.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which decides which drugs may be prescribed on the NHS, has decided to move toward an official appraisal of a drug, Avastin, that has been widely and cheaply used to prevent wet age-related macular degeneration – even though the drug companies that make and market it refuse to seek a license. They have a licensed version which is many times more expensive.

Avastin is licensed for bowel cancer, but ophthalmologists in the US discovered that – split into tiny doses suitable for injection into the eye – it could halt and even reverse the progress of wet AMD, which is the commonest cause of blindness. Eye specialists around the world have been using Avastin in this way, because splitting a vial into many tiny doses makes it relatively cheap.

But the manufacturer, Genentech, and the Swiss drugs company Roche, which markets Avastin in Britain, have fought this use. Genentech has produced and licensed a very similar but far more costly version, which it calls Lucentis, and which has been approved by Nice for the NHS.

(More at link ..)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/02/blindness-drug-avastin-nhs-nice

My mother was near-blind from wet age-related macular degeneration when she died in 2008, and my 90 year-old dad is totally blind in one eye and almost blind in the other from the same disease. My dad was a college professor and loved nothing better than reading. Gift buying for both my dad and mother was always a breeze: buy books. No more.

Big Pharma: rapaciou$ bastard$.

[old mark]

1. I got a prescription for Avastin after a colinoscopy found irritation

that might be pre-cancerous... With insurance, it would have cost me cost $350 a month for 30 tabs!
I am now taking an older but effective and proven drug that is about $6 a month and available as a generic.

They are locked in to makning that money and fuck everyone who needs the drugs. They are criminals, and the GOP is working directly for them.

K&R

mark