In its latest guidelines on colon cancer, the Cancer Network panel noted that not everyone with a risky gene variant gets sick from the drug, and that lower dosing for patients carrying such a variant could rob them of a cure or remission. Many doctors on the panel, including the University of Colorado School of Medicine oncologist Wells Messersmith, have said they have never witnessed a 5-FU death.
“When all of a sudden you have a new product that you’re supposed to give to your entire birth cohort, and you’ve got to pay $500 that may or may not get paid back, that’s just not financially viable,” said Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
“We need to see what’s going on to make sure we’re not doing more harm than good,” said Jason Gibbons, a health economist at the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus. “We’re concerned that it’s not working as intended, and it’s harming patients.”
“I do think that community engagement is a road map for improving public health emergency work in these communities,” said Dr. Ned Colange, associate dean for public health practice at the Colorado School of Public Health.
“Arguably, I think that the federal government is simply trying to stay ahead of the curve,” said Dr. Joshua Barocas, associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado [School of Medicine]. But, he said, “I have not seen robust data yet to suggest that it is better to boost Americans who have gotten two vaccines than invest resources and time in getting unvaccinated people across the world vaccinated.”
Dr. Sean O’Leary, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said the growing number of U.S. deaths could be another reason to think about COVID-19 and children. “We do know for sure that schoolchildren are major drivers of influenza epidemics in the community and, though that is not as much the case with COVID, it doesn’t mean they can’t spread it,” he said.
“You definitely don’t want people making those decisions in the heat of the moment, when they haven’t slept and they haven’t eaten and there’s no air conditioning,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus. “You make worse decisions under those circumstances.”
