Why is a geriatrician chairing the FDA panel making decisions about banning these medications?
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Kevin, the FDA is merely very belatedly getting around to saying what most Pediatricians have been saying for years – these medicines don’t work in kids and they can be dangerous.
Of course, we’ve had our arms twisted into corkscrews by parents who wanted “medicine” no matter what . . . and the companies that fed the want.
And if we didn’t prescribe the stronger versions of these medicines (so insurance would pay), we were “bad doctors”.
It’s gonna hurt some corporate pocketbooks. The sponsors will have to deal.
To answer the original question, it’s because you don’t actually need expertise in the subject to sit on an FDA panel. I attended a meeting about a drug approval where one of the panel members said openly that she did not know enough about the disease in question to understand what the statistical results on clinical improvement that the company presented would actually mean to patients. But hey, someone has to decide these things for the stupid patients and their stupid doctors!
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