On Monday, October 14, the NY Times broke news that Vincristine, a critical drug that serves as the backbone of treatment for most childhood cancers, has become increasingly scarce, and doctors are warning that they may soon be forced to consider rationing doses.
This follows the pharmaceutical company, Teva's, decision to discontinue production of the drug for "business reasons". Basically it wasn't profitable enough for them!
We have seen this happen with other treatments before, but Physicians say the loss of this medication is uniquely problematic, as there is no appropriate substitute. Our children are going to start relapsing and dying at higher rates if we do not do something about this shortage immediately! We need our government to step in and do something before it's too late!