Editorial: The price of life

Sunday, July 16, 2006 | 7:48 a.m.

Drug therapies that are among the newest weapons in the nation's 35-year-old war on cancer also are among its most exorbitantly expensive.

While prescription drug costs are soaring across the board, a recent USA Today report shows that the cost of cancer drug prescriptions rose about 16 percent last year, compared with the average 3 percent for other types of drugs. Patients pay $1,600 or $3,100 or even $10,000 for one-month supplies of a single medicine, the report says. These aren't even cures. The so-called "target" therapies are designed to prevent cancer cells from growing, turning cancers into chronic diseases rather than immediately fatal ones.

It is a routine philosophy in treating such conditions as AIDS, which once was fatal. Drug therapies allow many patients infected with the AIDS virus to live long and relatively healthy lives.

But when President Richard Nixon launched the nation's war on cancer in 1971, he meant for science to find a cure. In 1997 the New England Journal of Medicine report declared that war "far from over," and cited early detection and prevention as primary reasons cancer mortality rates had decreased, rather than better drug therapies.

In USA Today's story last week, the journal's former editor said that the expense of these new therapies are "exploiting the desperation of people with a life-threatening illness." After all, at what point does anyone consider price before considering his parent's life, his child's or his own?

Certainly, anyone faced with choosing between surviving another three years or another 10 has a seemingly clear choice. And it is only recently that cancer patients even had such choices, thanks in part to the research that has produced more effective drugs.

But how can pharmaceutical companies justify 16 percent jumps in the prices for these therapies? As private enterprises they have every right to recoup research and development costs and turn a profit. Still, few diseases receive the kind of private fundraising for research that cancer does.

We would never want to discard the important roles that early detection, prevention programs and new drug therapies have played in extending - and in some cases saving - cancer patients' lives. But increasing numbers of experts are wondering how and why patients are being charged thousands of dollars for a 30-day supply of a single drug that promises no cure.

At some point, pharmaceutical companies should have to account for the prices they set on these drugs. Patients and their families have a right to know so they can make informed choices.