I applaud FDA Commissioner Dr. Mark McClellan's efforts to help sick patients gain desperately needed access to new cancer-fighting drugs ("FDA Gives Quick Approval to Cancer Drugs," Personal Journal, May 14). His bold initiative to include actual cancer specialists with hands-on patient care expertise in the FDA's deliberations on new drug approvals will save lives and extend the lives of many others who had little hope.
This initiative should be used as a model for other federal agencies that seem constrained by the same "political science" formerly inhibiting the FDA. Most egregiously, the EPA should shed its role as de facto regulator-in-chief of alleged "cancer-causing chemicals" and let the experts in human carcinogenesis take over that role.
Why can't the EPA reach out to cancer experts in academia or the NCI similarly to what the FDA is now doing? The EPA continues to regulate and ban useful and harmless substances due to its rigid adherence to policies promulgated by "bureaucrats who may be statistical wizards" but have limited real-world experience with cancer. For example, the EPA should consult with cancer experts before pressuring the Defense Department about minuscule levels of perchlorate in water, and also consider the real loss to consumers if a substance as widely used as Teflon were restricted due to merely hypothetical risks to human health.
Jeff Stier
Associate Director
American Council on Science and Health
New York
