Rick,

While I'm not familiar with the situation that you're talking about - there could be a million different reasons why the FDA didn't look at "other" studies. Personally, I know that my company is researching between 25 to 30 different oncology drugs at any given time, and we're relatively medium sized company. The FDA ends up seeing a fraction of those studies to approval, and only a fraction more actually get approval.

Like I said, because there is such a high percentage of failed attempts, companies like mine navigate the quagmire of FDA red tape, procedures, and audits on behalf of the pharmas because we can do it better, faster, cheaper than they can.

I don't think even those of us on the far right would say that the FDA serves no role and needs to be pared down, but the fact that a multibillion dollar industry has been born out of their hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations speaks volumes about what the real reason why effective medicines sometimes do not make it through to consumers at a reasonable price.