The Agency Keeping Alzheimer’s Drugs From Patients

Another Alzheimer’s drug has yielded promising results, demonstrating a 35% decline in early-disease progression in a trial of 1,736 patients after 18 months. Donanemab, made by Eli Lilly , represents the strongest showing against Alzheimer’s to date. This success follows the Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval in January of lecanemab—a similar treatment from Biogen and Eisai—which showed a 27% decline in a trial of 1,795 patients after 18 months.

Yet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is denying seniors and their families access to these treatments, and rebuffing innovators who have produced the biggest breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s in two decades. Such regulatory overreach must stop.