Genentech's alternative to breakthrough committee

WASHINGTON - Genentech Inc. last week proposed to members of Congress that the Clinton administration's breakthrough drugs committee be abandoned in favor of technology assessment activities that would do a better job of accommodating the funding and development of improved medical technologies.

At a hearing of the House subcommittee on technology, environment and aviation, meeting on the impact of health care reform on innovative therapies, GNE clinical director John Curd said the Advisory Council on Breakthrough Drugs should be eliminated in favor of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR), which was created by Congress in 1989. ...