A Solution for Misplaced Incentives

The medical community has been in an uproar since the Food and Drug Administration awarded three years of market exclusivity for the centuries-old gout medication colchicine to a small Philadelphia drugmaker. The exclusivity award, based on a clinical trial that finally proved the drug actually worked (it had been grandfathered in under the original FDA safety and efficacy laws and was previously offered by a number of generic manufacturers), raised the price from about $10 a month to $150 a month. (For the full story, see this Wall Street Journal report.)

A commentary in today's New England Journal of Medicine comes up with the easy solution to the FDA's desire to fill in the gaps in regulatory data for drugs like colchicine. "An alternative solution, probably much less expensive, would... [via Gooznews]