In USA Today (5/7), Peter W. Carmel, president of the American Medical Association, expresses skepticism about the Food and Drug Administration’s “new concept to make more prescription drugs available over the counter (OTC),” noting that his organization “is concerned about patients taking certain drugs without physician involvement – especially patients with chronic diseases.” Carmel argues, “Patients rely on physicians to provide sound diagnosis and treatment information and to help them meet their unique health needs. Expanding many prescription medications to OTC interferes with that important relationship without offering any real benefits to improve patients’ health or reduce their costs.”

        USAToday Touts FDA System. USA Today (5/7) editorializes that “people get better care when they see doctors,” and the FDA would “have to ensure that a new system wasn’t used by drugmakers to promote easier access to drugs that are new to the market, have severe side effects or are prone to abuse.” The piece argues, “But for Americans with serious but controllable conditions who get no medication or fail to keep up with prescriptions, a little more flexibility could be just what the doctor ordered.”

The UK’s Telegraph (4/25, Adams) reports, “Taking a daily aspirin after being diagnosed with bowel cancer can reduce the chance of dying from the disease by almost a third, according to research published” in the British Journal of Cancer. Investigators found that “patients with colorectal cancer who took an 80mg tablet daily for at least nine months were 30 per cent less likely to die over an average follow-up period of 3.5 years, compared to those who did not take it at all.” This “effect was even more marked for those diagnosed with colon cancer, as opposed to rectal cancer, cutting the chance of death by 39 per cent.”

The UK’s Telegraph (4/8, Gray) reports, “A vaccine that can train cancer patients’ own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists. The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients’ immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer.” The Telegraph notes that “the new vaccine, developed by drug company Vaxil Biotheraputics along with researchers at Tel Aviv University, uses a small section of the molecule to prime the immune system so that it can identify and destroy cancer cells.”