The Food and Drug Administration has listed 14 cancer drugs currently in shortage, with new drug shortages increasing by nearly 30 percent between 2021 and 2022.
According to a March report from the senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs, this is a record five-year high of 295 active drug shortages. One of the drugs in shortage is carboplatin, a chemotherapy agent used as a first line treatment for a number of cancers.
Cancer specialists knew that the shortage was coming and tried to prepare. For the last couple of months, they’ve been rationing by rounding down doses of carboplatin by 10 percent, which they claim doesn’t diminish the overall effectiveness of the drug. Experts say the current carboplatin shortage is due to a number of pharmaceutical companies going out of business, or having quality control problems because the profitability of the drug is very low.
