OLAPARIB*: NOT A PATENT MEDICINE

A Michigan Halloween

We here in the U.S. have our NIH; in the U.K. they make do with NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence),  Both are  bureaucracies  charged with protecting the public from dangerous and/or fraudulent medical practices.  Both, in my view, tend to err on the side of caution.  Way over on the side of caution, sometimes.  How to fix ‘em?  Wish I knew.

My picture is that NIH and NICE were set up during an era where the public needed protection from – a hypothetical example – horse urine bottled in pretty containers and marketed as a sure-fire cure for baldness.  That era is now largely history, although some of the claims I see from time to time about the effectiveness of various diet schemes as therapeutic agent suggests it hasn’t completely vanished.  But all too often, in my view, drugs that could be of use are denied the patient out of an excess of caution.  I’ve written about this before.  The Hippocratic Oath often is rendered “First, do no harm.”  Maybe it should read “Do no harm, either of commission or omission” Letting someone die because a drug that might work could possibly do harm is a sin of omission, and is no less regrettable than offing them by prescribing  the wrong drug.  But what do I know: I’m just a dumb geologist. 

Here is the article that occasioned this outburst:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/healthadvice/11659095/Rejecting-ovarian-cancer-drug-Olaparib-is-a-major-disappointment.html 

Oh, yes.  You'll have to put up with an accelerated pace of new blogs; I want you to have something to think about while Karen and I are in the Land of the Sagas.

*You'll have to read the website to find out what this has to do with anything.