Mark Hertzberg
In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Inlyta, a $10,000 a month drug meant to treat advanced kidney cancer, and allowed it to hit the market. However, there's no evidence Inlyta can treat cancer at all—in fact, it might have hastened the death of a cancer patient during a clinical trial.
And Inlyta is only the tip of the iceberg. The FDA allowed 74% of the 54 new cancer drugs without proof the drugs extended the lives of patients.
From the story: "Instead, the agency approved the drugs based on surrogate measures, such as a tumor shrinking, rather than the gold standard and most reliable measure of cancer research, patients actually surviving longer. The problem is cancer is complicated — a tumor might stop growing or shrink in one spot, then reappear somewhere else, or even in multiple places."
Read the full investigation at the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.