This has sparked outcries from both drug companies and patients.
Significant reform is needed.
Manufacturers must get formal FDA approval, through a very long and costly process, for each specific approved use of a drug. As often happens, doctors, hospitals and researchers later discover that the drug is also effective at treating other types of cancers. They then write up such uses in medical journals and other publications. In the past, pharmaceutical companies routinely publicized the results of further research on their drugs after approval, thereby alerting physicians of other possible ways to save lives. But in 1991 FDA Commissioner David Kessler prohibited pharmaceutical companies from informing doctors of new uses for approved drugs.