Biden's Cancer Research Initiative is Dead on Arrival
By Sally C. Pipes
Earlier this year, the Biden administration announced a new cancer research initiative, the Precision Surgical Interventions program, as part of the president's recently relaunched Cancer Moonshot.
The aim of the broader Moonshot program is to slash the cancer mortality rate in half within the next 25 years. The new PSI initiative will help advance that goal by funding research into new technologies and techniques that surgeons can use to identify and excise cancerous cells with minimal damage to healthy tissue.
It's a worthy initiative -- but any survival gains eked out by better surgical techniques will almost certainly be canceled out by the drug pricing policies in the administration's signature piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act.
The IRA, signed into law on August 16, 2022, gave Washington bureaucrats the power to dictate the prices that Medicare will pay for some of the most commonly used prescription drugs. Officials announced the first 10 drugs subject to price controls in August, with more to follow each year.
The United States is home to some of the best and brightest research scientists and entrepreneurs -- and the deepest pocketed investors. They're working tirelessly to find new treatments and cures for cancer. In fact, cancer mortality rates were down 27% between 2001 and 2020.
But these companies pursuing breakthrough treatments, especially startups, require huge investments to take their ideas from the lab through clinical trials and FDA approval. That journey costs on average more than $2 billion per FDA approved drug, counting in the costs of failed research projects that don't bear fruit. About 90% of promising treatments that enter clinical trials ultimately fail along the way.
The only reason investors are willing to take such risks is the prospect of a substantial return on their rare successes. The IRA's price controls -- which are aimed at the most commercially successful "blockbuster" drugs -- throw that investment calculus into question.
Already, pharmaceutical companies are feeling the impact of the new legislation and altering their drug research and development plans.
Right after the IRA was passed, Alnylam stopped development of its drug Amvuttra, which was being studied to treat Stargardt disease, a hereditary eye condition causing vision loss in children and young adults. The company cited the Inflation Reduction Act as the reason for halting the third phase of its study.
The IRA is sure to take a severe toll on the creation of new medications. One recent study projected that the law will result in 139 fewer new medications coming to market over 10 years.
To beat cancer, we need to leverage all the tools at our disposal. That includes bold new surgical techniques for cancer. But it must also include more and better drug treatments of the kind the Biden administration is busy killing off.
Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Encounter 2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.
