CNN: Thousands of Bladder Cancer Patients Are Not Receiving Full Treatment Due to Pharmaceutical Companies Not Making the Drug Because It’s Cheap

EXCERPT:

COHEN: "Erica, there are shortages of so many different drugs out there. And this is one of them. One of the sponsors of this report says it is just heartbreaking talking to patients who are told what we should give you for your bladder cancer is this many doses of this drug called BCG, but we can't, we can't do it because there's not enough of it. So bladder cancer is a terrible -- no cancer is good, this is a particularly terrible one, a 30 to 40 percent recurrence rate, which is very high. So let's take a look at what's going on with this drug. Again, it's called BCG. And some hospitals say they're just giving fewer doses, they just can't give as many as they would like to give. And so patients are told sorry. Some hospitals in this report, they say they can't give it at all. They have none to give their bladder cancer patients. Now you ask why? What's going on here? Different drug shortages have different reasons. For this one, it is more than 40 years old. It is inexpensive, so no pharmaceutical company is clamoring to make it, and it is tough to make.”