Drug scarcity’s dire cost, and some ways to cope
When Jenny Morrill, who has been battling ovarian cancer since 2007, went to the hospital for her scheduled chemotherapy treatment in June, the nurse greeted her with both good news and bad.
“She said, ‘The good news is that you’re doing really well on this drug Doxil. The bad news is that we have no Doxil to give you,’ ” said Ms. Morrill, 55. “My jaw dropped.”
Ms. Morrill, a mother and a former arts administrator who lives near Kingston, N.Y., is one of thousands of patients with ovarian cancer, multiple myeloma, AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma or other cancer who were left in the lurch last summer when supplies of Doxil, a chemotherapy drug less toxic than many comparable agents, ran out because of production problems at the only plant that made it.
