US FDA’s approval of Mitsubishi's Radicava (edaravone) is yet another demonstration of the agency’s flexibility for drugs to treat rare diseases – and pre-emptive action to fend off “Right to Try” laws. It is also a belated endorsement of one of the stranger votes by an FDA advisory committee member almost a decade ago.
FDA’s outside advisory committee members are not always models of intellectual rigor and consistency when it comes time to vote on drug approval decisions.
But of all the strange votes recorded over the years, one of the strangest came in 2010, during the Pulmonary-Allergy...