By: Jasmine Jiang

Drugmakers are abandoning cheap generic drugs; researchers say this is the cause for several cancer patients in the U.S not getting medicine.

On November 22, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspected the south of Ahmedabad, India, they found shredded documents thrown into a garbage truck. It took the inspectors ten days to evaluate that the factory producing generic cisplatin and carboplatin (two very cheap drugs to cure cancer) were hiding quality problems.

Cisplatin is a chemotherapy drug used to treat testicular, ovarian, bladder, head and neck, lung and cervical cancer. Carboplatin is a drug used to treat ovarian cancer.

Several months later, many states in the U.S. are still experiencing drug shortages, discontinuations and delays. The drug shortages have impacted many patients, like Isabella McDonald, who is being treated for bone cancer with a drug called methotrexate. However, she wasn’t able to get the full dose on her second cycle caused by the drug shortage, said her father Brent.

Many doctors are furious as they can’t treat the patients as well as they use to. “All day, in between patients, we hold staff meetings trying to figure this out,” said Dr. Bonny Moore, an oncologist in Fredericksburg, Va. “It’s the most nauseous I’ve ever felt. Our office stayed open during COVID; we never had to stop treating patients. We got them vaccinated, kept them safe, and now I can’t get them a $10 drug.”

Source:

Los Angeles Times