It has been a bad month for patients battling with the authorities to win access to new drugs.
In the UK, people with mild Alzheimer’s disease lost a High Court bid to win access to donepezil (marketed as Aricept), a drug that delays the onset of symptoms by increasing the availability of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. And in the US, the , which represents people with cancer, lost its battle to obtain and use experimental anti-cancer drugs before they have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The UK had teamed up with…
