|
The Society for Neuroscience invited
Intel Co-founder Andy Grove to speak at their conference on November
4, 2007. Mr. Grove has been diagnosed with a mild form of
Parkinson’s, and as all patients do who study updated information
about the possibilities of new treatments or even a cure ,
eventually realized that those chances are not as great as research
literature would have one think.
Being an exceptionally successful business
leader himself, Mr. Grove tackled the difficult factors involved in
moving a treatment through the pipeline by comparing it to what he
knows well – the computer chip industry. Initially, when
Newsweek.com released a preview of what his talk would be about at
the Society for Neuroscience Conference and presented it online as
a” scathing review “of the medical research and development
industry, bloggers blasted Grove, not so much in the Newsweek
comments, as on other related technology and medical/research blogs.
For a few days, the criticism continued, one
blogger declaring that Mr. Grove is just a very wealthy and spoiled
man, who thinks he can buy himself a cure. If that were true, there
would be no diseases in the world, as Andy Grove is only one of many
wealthy people in the world.
Andy Grove was being generous when he said
treatment development is like a train that leaves and doesn’t return
for 10 years. For neurological diseases, and probably others that I
am less familiar with, it’s more like 14 years or more. All the
while, article after article is published with new findings that
mean little for patients now. The facts remain that each innovative
treatment must be tested pre-clinically with animals and then in
humans, as well as pass through the FDA. This “speed of
turn-around” as referred to by Grove, is unacceptable to a person
with a serious, chronic, life-threatening illness.
Mr. Grove is not suggesting that safety be
sacrificed. He is suggesting that treatments not be abandoned
because arbitrary percentages of improvement are not met, when there
is evidence of safety and efficacy.
This is common sense. But common sense in
the drug development process, until proven differently to me, is
defined by profit gained, not human lives.
Thus Andy Grove suggests that mistakes should
be thoroughly evaluated and when there is evidence remaining that
the drug is working [common sense tells me that patients are the
best resources for describing or demonstrating their improvement],
dig down and learn from the study abnormalities before calling them
failures and continue the research; do not prematurely condemn a
drug that could save millions from suffering.
Throwing away a treatment that could work for
many goes against common sense, unless profit overrules common
sense.
Andy Grove’s final suggestion was to rebalance
and restructure the NIH (National Institutes of Health) funding for
medical research to allow industry and academia more funding to
translate basic science into treatments for the patient.
Isn’t that what we are supposed to expect from
the NIH? Funding for treatments? Isn’t that just common sense?
When patients entered the critical blogs and
posted the link to Andy Grove’s actual presentation in its entirety,
bloggers became immediately silent. It’s difficult to argue against
common sense.
http://pdpipeline.org/andygrove/agrove1.htm
http://www.newsweek.com/id/68221
|
