Image via CrunchBaseby Gina KolataDr. Joel Ross, the founder and chief executive of the Memory Enhancement Centers of New Jersey, makes his living enrolling subjects in drug company clinical trials that are testing drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, among others.
So when Eli Lilly announced last week that its promising Alzheimer’s drug was making patients worse and that it was halting two large clinical trials, it seemed likely that Dr. Ross would hear from family members of his patients. Are other experimental Alzheimer’s drugs safe? they might ask. Should they get their family members out of those Alzheimer’s studies?
Not a single family member called. And Dr. Ross is not sure why.
If a study of an experimental breast cancer drug was ended because it made the cancer grow and spread, women in other breast cancer studies of similar drugs would be calling their doctors and asking what to do.
But Alzheimer’s is different. “It may reflect the incredible desperation surrounding Alzheimer’s disease,” said Baruch Brody, director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine.
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