The Drug Approval Process
Dr. Jean Yves-Blay: It is true that different drugs may be approved in a specific country and not approved in another country. The reason for that is not scientific; the same body of evidence is available for everybody, but in some countries the health authorties estimate that the benefit for the patient is not sufficient or not sufficiently demonstrated. For instance, when you have a drug which has not been demonstrated to improve overall survival, some health authorties may decide not to accept the drug, and this may happen for some drugs in the US or for some drugs in Europe. It's really evenly distributed.
I think that this is a process which is probably going to be limited in the future. The reason for that is that the trials are getting stronger in terms of scientfic evidence, and everybody is going to draw the same conclusions based on these trials in the near future. But right now it's true that there remain some discrepancies.