Opinion: As a pediatric cancer researcher, I admired the FDA. Then I got ALS

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as I have unfortunately come to learn, is a terrible disease with no cure. Some exciting treatments are on the horizon, but the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Neuroscience , which has the task of overseeing the development of new ALS drugs in the U.S., has repeatedly failed to take aggressive steps to greenlight these experimental therapies. I, and others like me, desperately need the FDA’s neuroscience office to be more aggressive in approving experimental treatments.
That might sound like wishful thinking. Or it might sound like naivete on the part of someone who does not understand the rigors of the drug approval process. But I know from my work as a childhood cancer specialist for the past 45 years that the agency is capable of doing better. Read the rest…