Biogen’s announcement on Tuesday that it is “substantially eliminating” its spending on Aduhelm caps a remarkable story of drug development gone bad.
In a controversial move in June 2021, the Food and Drug Administration approved the Alzheimer’s drug, disregarding the strong objections of a panel of independent experts that said the science didn’t support approving the drug.
In early April of this year, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services announced it would cover the cost of Aduhelm only for patients enrolled in clinical trials supported by the CMS, FDA, and the National Institutes of Health. That decision was scientifically based and politically courageous — the drug is clinically ineffective, unsafe, and expensive.
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