Hahn Defends Using Less ‘Robust’ Data During COVID, But Critics Contend It Has Gone Too Far

Sarah Karlin-Smith, Informa Pharma Intelligence: June 04, 2020


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Anecdotes Are Not Data Sets

The regulatory flexibility touted by Hahn was embraced to some degree by even some of the agency’s most notable critics, who agreed that the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic should allow for a different pace of decision making than under normal circumstances. However, they said they were concerned that FDA is misusing such flexibility, particularly when it came to the emergency use authorization (EUA) for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine.

“I agree with Dr. Hahn that in emergency situations it makes sense to move quickly and change course quickly if the evidence is different from what was hoped for. But the only justification for making [hydroxychloroquine] immediately widely available was that President Trump had ‘a good feeling about it,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research.

The EUA was granted based on laboratory data and anecdotal clinical reports. (Also see “FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization for Malaria Drugs Could Hinder Trials of Other COVID-19 Treatments” – Pink Sheet, 30 Mar, 2020.)

Zuckerman described this not as datasets but as anecdotal evidence. “Scientists don’t call anecdotal evidence datasets. As any scientist can tell you, the plural of anecdote is ‘anecdotes’ not ‘data,”” Zuckerman said.

In an emergency situation “making decisions on the fly and using the best data that you have is inevitable,” but the agency should follow certain principles when it does this, said Aaron Kesselheim, the director of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Kesselheim’s third principle was that the FDA should revisit or revise these decisions just as quickly as they made them when new information emerges. He said the FDA has done a good job in some circumstances of adhering to these principles and done less well in others.

As Hahn mentioned in his speech, the agency has reversed some of its early EUAs for COVID-19 tests. (Also see “FDA Yanks Potentially Faulty COVID-19 Antibody Tests – And More May Be On The Chopping Block” – Medtech Insight, 22 May, 2020.)

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