Greg Ganske: “my congratulations to all who have been involved with this bill. As a physician, I am very proud to be in favor of this…”

“my congratulations to all who have been involved with this bill. As a physician, I am very proud to be in favor of this bill. This bill will help bring new and better drugs and medical devices to the market. It will also help older drugs be better used. There are many off-label uses of older drugs that are beneficial to our constituents, like aspirin to prevent heart attacks; 80 to 90 percent of cancer treatment is off-label. In fact, for some diseases, off-label treatment is a standard of care. Section 7 of H.R. 1411 improves to help public health by increasing the amount of accurate, balanced, scientific information that is available to physicians and other health care professionals. This has been an important compromise between the administration, the FDA, and a bipartisan Congress. Secretary Shalala said the language that we have agreed to will give the FDA the opportunity to review new information in advance of its dissemination to ensure that it is accurate and balanced. This provision is supported by the AMA, the American Cancer Society, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and many other groups who know that greater dissemination of scientific information means better care for patients. Please vote for this bill.”