With the cost of some life-saving cancer drugs exceeding $100,000 a year, more than 100 influential cancer specialists from around the world have taken the unusual step of banding together in hopes of persuading some leading pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down.
Dr. John M. Goldman, emeritus professor of hematology at Imperial College in London and a co-author of the commentary, said he knew several researchers who declined to become authors because they feared losing research money from the industry.
Dr. Kantarjian, the lead author, said that was a risk.
“I am sure I am going to be blackballed,” he said. “My research career will be hurt.”
But he said it was time to speak out. “Pharmaceutical companies have lost their moral sense,” he said. Prices, he added, “are getting to the point where it is becoming unsustainable.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/business/cancer-physicians-attack-high...
------------------------------------------------------------------
original article in Blood:
http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/early/2013/04/23/blood...
