Should U.S. consider drug efficacy?

WASHINGTON, July 1 (UPI) -- Two cancer researchers say the United States should move away from the use of expensive cancer treatments that extend life only by a few weeks.

Tito Fojo, an oncologist with the National Cancer Institute, and Christine Grady, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, suggested employing a system like that in Great Britain where drugs are approved only if they meet standards of efficacy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Their study was published Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Grady and Fojo used published studies of Erbitux to determine that 18 weeks of treatment, at a cost of $80,000, gives lung cancer patients on average less than five weeks more of life. About 550,000 people die of cancer in the United States every year, and the authors estimated providing drug therapies to extend life for a year would cost $440 billion.

Brian Henry, a spokesman for Bristol-Myers, which makes Erbitux, pointed out that the drug is not approved to treat lung cancer. He said the true cost varies enormously depending on the type of cancer a patient has, how advanced it is and the recommended course of treatment.