New paper from Holly Fernandez Lynch aims to address patients’ questions about treatment for non-COVID-19 diseases

“After witnessing extraordinary scientific and regulatory efforts to speed development of and access to new COVID-19 interventions, patients facing other serious diseases have begun to ask ‘where’s our Operation Warp Speed? and ‘why isn’t Emergency Use Authorization an option for our health crises?’” opens the paper’s abstract.

Holly Fernandez Lynch's paper: “Helpful Lessons and Cautionary Tales: How Should COVID-19 Drug Development and Access Inform Approaches to Non-Pandemic Diseases?” was published yesterday (10/19) in the American Journal of Bioethics. Fernandez Lynch co-wrote this paper with Arthur Caplan, Patricia Furlong, and Alison Bateman-House.

Fernandez Lynch et al. note that “…the response to COVID-19 offers translatable lessons, in both its successes and failures, for non-pandemic diseases. These include the importance of collaborating across sectors, supporting the highest-priority research efforts, adopting rigorous and innovative trial designs, and sharing reliable information quickly... policymakers and patient advocates seeking to build on the COVID-19 experience for non-pandemic diseases with unmet treatment needs should focus their efforts on promoting robust and efficient research designs, improving access to clinical trials, and facilitating use of the Food and Drug Administration’s existing Expanded Access pathway."