BMJ 2002;325:269-271 ( 3 August )

Education and debate

Efficacy, safety, and cost of new anticancer drugs

Silvio Garattini, director, Vittorio Bertele', head, regulatory policy laboratory. 

Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, 20157 Milan, Italy

Correspondence to: S Garattini sgarattini@marionegri.it

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Italian pharmacologists Silvio Garattini and Vittorio Bertele' note that new anticancer drugs reaching the European market in 1995-2000 offered few or no substantial advantages over existing preparations, yet cost several timesin one case 350 timesas much

Though only an imperfect indicator of progress in cancer control,¹ age standardised mortality in the European Union, for both sexes combined, had been increasing up to 1988; since then it has decreased from 147 to 136 per 100 000 inhabitants.² Prevention is probably one of the main reasons for this drop, particularly the decrease in tobacco smoking; another reason is the use of screening for early diagnosis of cancers of the cervix and breast and possibly also of the colon and rectum..

The greatest changes have been 4500 fewer deaths from childhood tumours and 4000 fewer from lymphomas (Hodgkin's disease) each year over the past four decades. Among solid tumours, advances have been made in treating breast cancer, in . . . [Full text of this article]

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Authors' reply

Silvio Garattini, et al.
bmj.com, 25 Sep 2002 [Full text]