Over the last several months, since late May actually, I have been confronted by a challenging conundrum affecting a critical factor in my well-being: my eyesight. I am blessed to have access to a new miracle drug thanks to the biotech industry. At the same time I have gotten a glimpse of few inches of the underbelly of the pharmaceutical industry, and how decisions are made about what treatments are covered by insurance, or not. Interestingly in this case, I believe that even the insurance companies are getting screwed, as hard as it may be for some of us here to believe that.
This is a story about a miraculous but very expensive drug, Lucentis, manufactured by Genentech, about the advantages of having health insurance, about a celebration of still having vision in my left eye... and
About a question, not to be answered conclusively in this diary, about whether or not Genentech is preventing the use of another drug it makes, Avastin, which many doctors say works as well as Lucentis, but cost perhaps one-thirtieth as much per dose as Lucentis.
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