Two-thirds of new cancer drugs in the past five years were approved not because they extended or improved life but based on so-called surrogate measures of effectiveness, such as scans showing tumor shrinkage, according to a paper published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
What’s more, even four years after being allowed on the market by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, many of the drugs still had not showed they were making people live longer, according to the paper, which closely echoes findings from a Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today investigation from last October.
