[This is off-the-cuff live blogging, so apologies for any errors, typos, etc]
Day two of PFC’s FDA in the 21st Century conference begins with a morning plenary by the very fabulous Alta Charo, of the University of Wisconsin Law School, who is speaking on “Integrating Speed and Safety.”
Today Alta is presenting what she calls “more of an initial idea than an actual proposal,” and she notes that she’s very interested to hear responses to it, so comment away or contact her offline. She wants to integrate into the usual and longstanding “FDA speed versus safety” debate some concerns that should be of interest to industry. “In other words,” she said, “I’d like to be nice to the drug people.”
Alta begins with a brief history of the speed versus safety debate, which turns out to be quite cyclical. Before 1906, she asks us to recall, we had true snake oil: products with high toxicity and little or no efficacy. Often these products were nevertheless perceived as effective because they contained alcohol or other drugs, so made you feel better at least, but of course that’s part of what made these products so dangerous, especially for children.
And so with the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906, we get post-market remedies for misbranding, although they require proof of intent. And then in 1937 over 100 children die from elixir of sulfanilamide. And the following year we get the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. But the FDCA targets only safety. (Although rightly Alta notes that it’s hard to see how regulators were truly only looking at safety and not also at some form of efficacy, since there is no such thing as safety in the abstract, only safety relative to purpose for which someone is taking the drug.) Continue reading
