Why Do Doctors Choose A $2,000 Cure When A $50 One Is Just As Good?

 
By Andrew Lam, M.D., is a retinal surgeon, Assistant Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine
I’m a doctor with a miracle drug. Three of them, in fact. Their names are Avastin, Lucentis and Eylea. I use them to treat the number one cause of blindness in Americans over sixty-five: wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Calling them a miracle is no understatement. If your doctor delivers the unlucky news that you’ve developed wet AMD, it means blood vessels under your macula have started to leak or bleed, robbing you of the sight you rely on to read books, see faces, watch TV or drive.
Enter the miracle drugs—eye injections that limit those leaking submacular vessels, giving us our first treatment capable of bringing vision back. But somehow, these drugs have become among the most controversial in all of medicine.
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