BACK of the BOOK
Heard in the Blogosphere
Katie Sharkey, MD, PhD
The Other Opioid Epidemic
@katie_sharkey
Can we all agree that a “peer-to-peer” isn’t really a “peer-
to-peer” when the physician working for the interests of
the insurance company is not trained and boarded in the
specialty relevant to the clinical issue?
AcademicsSay
@AcademicsSay
How to find manuscript typos:
1. Click submit
Drew Armstrong
@ArmstrongDrew
The drug industry may be the only place where you can
resuscitate a flagging product by raising the price 5x.
ASH
@ASH_Hematology
Immunotherapies are playing
an increasingly important role
in public health. Dive deep into
the state of immunotherapy
research, regulation, and
clinical application at ASH’s
newest meeting
Krishna Komanduri, MD
@drkomanduri
If you are going to send me
an invitation to contribute
to a fake journal it is nice to
call me magnificent in the
subject line.
Julia Hum, PhD
@JuliaHumPhD
And @theotherkrista wins
the award for best #BMS
seminar title! Such a fine
@bmresgroup trainee
#LoweryLab
“Most doctors and health policy experts these days are focused on the
overabundance of pills fueling the opioid crisis gripping the United States.
Cancer doctors like me lie awake at night worrying about the looming
shortage of injectable opioids that we need to treat our in-pain and dying
patients. … Decisions to cut all opioid production by 25 percent in 2016
and by an additional 20 percent in 2017 have threatened the availability
of opioids for terminally ill cancer patients in hospitals across the U.S. …
We clearly need to target [opioid] abuse [but] it’s equally important that
federal and state efforts to rein in opioid abuse don’t force people who
need these medications to suffer for a single day without them.”
—Tara E. Soumerai, MD, on the country’s looming opioid shortage in STAT News
Is It Time to Relax Clinical Trial Rules?
Nearly 20 percent of publicly funded trials in the U.S. fail because of low enrollment, and strict
eligibility criteria is likely a major cause. In Nature, cancer researchers spoke about the effects of
overly restrictive criteria, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to open up enrollment.
“You can have the greatest ideas and the greatest science. But if no one goes on the study, what
good is it?”
—Stuart Lichtman, MD, from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York
“There is nothing magical about 18. Your body pharmacologically metabolizes drugs the same way
at age 12 as it does at age 18.”
—Edward S. Kim, MD, from Levine Cancer Institute and Atrium Health in Charlotte, North Carolina
“What really frustrates me are instances when, in my mind and in my heart, it really seemed that
the patients should be eligible. If I had the exact same treatment outside of a clinical trial, I would
give it to them without a concern.”
—David Gerber, MD, from Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at
UT Southwestern Medicine Center in Dallas
Why Can’t Dying Patients Get the Drugs They Want?
In March 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed “Right to Try” legislation that would
allow terminally ill patients access to experimental drugs, but the bill did not address the big-
gest barrier to access to these treatments: permission from the drug companies themselves.
In The New York Times, patients, physicians, and policy experts spoke about the pharmaceutical
industry’s patchwork system of early-access policies.
“You have to be pretty sophisticated [to navigate the system]. The bill passed [recently] does
somewhere between nothing and absolutely nothing to help you.”
—Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, a bioethicist at New York University School of Medicine
“We believe any legislation must truly benefit and protect patients and not disrupt the future
of clinical trials, U.S. Food and Drug Administration oversight, an