Off-label drug use defended by US think-tank

Commenting on the recent debate about off-label prescribing of drugs in the USA (Marketletter August 21), Robert Goldberg, vice president of the New York, USA-based think-tank the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, said: "people tend to forget that the first off-label use of a cancer drug AZT [Retrovir (zidovudine)] was critical in the treatment of HIV patients or that the off-label use of thalidomide and Avastin [bevacizumab] have been associated with remarkable advances in treating cancer." He added that "the push to make off-label prescribing a criminal activity is a tragedy that will be measured in human lives."