A few months ago, the FDA approved a new drug, aducamumab, to treat Alzheimer’s disease. This was the first time in 20 years that the FDA approved a drug for Alzheimer’s, and while that may sound hopeful, many experts have already pointed out that it was a colossal mistake, and a looming tragedy for Alzheimer’s patients. Here are 4 reasons why the approval of aducamumab (also called Aduhelm) is such a disaster.
1. The new drug just doesn’t work
The biggest problem is that Aduhelm doesn’t slow down or reverse the progress of Alzheimer’s. More than a year ago, I wrote about the failure of two trials of aducamumab.
3. Greed wins
Why did Biogen work so hard to find some shred of evidence that they could use to convince the FDA to approve their new drug? The answer can be found in the price that Biogen set for the drug: $56,000 per year.
As the editors of JAMA Internal Medicine have pointed out, if even one-sixth of Alzheimer’s patients in the U.S. alone were to take this drug, the annual cost would be $57 billion, which is far greater than the cost of all Medicare part B drugs combined in 2018.
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In other words, aducamumab’s costs could bankrupt Medicare.
