In last week’s issue of The Cancer Letter, the cover story featured coverage of Kalshi, an online prediction market exchange, launching a pilot program in which one can place bets on both outcomes of trials and FDA decisions.
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In this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher with The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, discuss the Kalshi’s entrance into betting on clinical trials and drug development.
“This is worth reading. I mean, this is, for those who still drink, definitely an excellent accompaniment to a Scotch. It will go well with Scotch,” Paul said. “Even though I prefer vodka, this will go with Scotch.”
A big chunk of the story about Kalshi was made up of the answers to a three-question survey that The Cancer Letter administered to members of the oncology community.
In the podcast, Jacquelyn and Paul recalled one answer they found particularly enjoyable.
“Prediction markets are another opportunity to violate the law, but, if used correctly, there should not be a problem. Overall, I don’t think this is problematic for society, but certainly creates another opportunity for my colleagues to lose money and go to jail,” Mark Ratain, director of the Center for Personalized Therapeutics, the Leon O. Jacobson Professor of Medicine, chief hospital pharmacologist at University of Chicago Medicine, said to The Cancer Letter in last week’s cover story.
This episode is sponsored by City of Hope. Learn more at www.cityofhope.org.
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
- Prediction markets now allow betting on clinical trial results, FDA decisions It’s a high-risk bet: Insider trading, equipoise, integrity of research, public trust are at stake
- Trump plans a 200% tariff on imported generic drugs by 2029, raising fears of cancer drug shortages
- Retraction is not refutation: Why chrono-immunotherapy still deserves scientific investigation
- Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr., inventor of molecular epidemiology, was a “gentle giant” who “bet on the good people” Chanock and Brawley reflect on their illustrious mentor
- FDA’s OCE publishes three final guidances to increase clinical trial enrollment
This episode was transcribed using transcription services. It has been reviewed by our editorial staff, but the transcript may be imperfect.
The following is a transcript of this week’s In the Headlines, a weekly series on The Cancer Letter Podcast:
Jacquelyn Cobb: This week on The Cancer Letter Podcast… Ratain said, “Prediction markets are another opportunity to violate the law, but if used correctly, there should not be a problem,” which is what you’re referring to. He’s sort of saying he’s not particularly worried about this. “Overall, I don’t think this is problematic for society, but certainly creates another opportunity for my colleagues to lose money and go to jail.” So I feel like-
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, but he’s not worried.
Jacquelyn Cobb: He’s not worried. Well, I mean-
Paul Goldberg: He couldn’t care less if anybody falls for it, then goes to jail. I joined him with this lack of worry about it because it’s just another week, another good thing about being a journalist. What really disturbed me, just immediately after I heard this over dinner a few days ago that this is happening, and first of all, I couldn’t believe it. And secondly, I said, “Equipoise. My God, the loss of Equipoise.”
If you’re putting patients on trial and you are betting on that trial, unbeknownst to them, then you’re a very bad investigator. That’s one possibility. And this is hypothetical, I’m not talking about anybody specific because I hope everybody’s smart enough not to do this nonsense. And the other thing is if you’re on the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, DSMB, that means you really deserve to go to prison for that one.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: You’re listening to The Cancer Letter Podcast. The Cancer Letter is a weekly independent magazine covering oncology since 1973. I’m your host, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter.
Jacquelyn Cobb: And I’m your host, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter. We’ll be bringing you the latest stories, groundbreaking research, and critical conversations shaping oncology.
Paul Goldberg: So let’s get going.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Hi, Paul. How are you?
Paul Goldberg: Hi, Jacquelyn. How are you?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Good, good. Hope I didn’t interrupt you.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, I was just looking at my device and I got caught looking at my device.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Classic, classic there.
Paul Goldberg: It’s classic.
Jacquelyn Cobb: They know how to get you.
Paul Goldberg: They do. They do. It’s just a lack of privacy. That’s what a lot of this is. I’m looking at my device. I’m trying to see what that text was that I just received, and then suddenly, “Hello, Paul.”
Jacquelyn Cobb: As if this isn’t a planned meeting with a countdown.
Paul Goldberg: No, yeah. I didn’t see the countdown. I was checking the phone.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Checking the device. Yes, I got it. Well, I will take us through last week’s headlines. We had a really cool story Sara did about a pretty wonky bit of news. The Kalshi and Polymarket, two … I don’t know. How would you describe them, Paul? I always have a hard time with this, like a platform?
Paul Goldberg: Well, they’re essentially taking bets on the outcomes of clinical trials all over medicine, but also really including oncology. And you can also bet, I mean, these are different markets, but you can also bet on the FDA regulatory actions.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Yes. Yes. So Polymarket and Kalshi exist as betting platforms, I guess, but you bet on real world things like the invasion of Venezuela, a lot of sports stuff, whether Trump will say hippopotamus in July, almost anything you can bet on. And the news is that Kalshi has now opened up betting on clinical trials and FDA regulation like Paul said. So that’s the story we’re going to be talking about in more depth today. But before we do that, I will go through the rest of the issue.
So our story too was a story about Trump’s announced plan, although it is via Truth Social, not X. It was on Truth Social that he announced this policy. And I did confirm with the White House that that is the official policy, but there is no formal announcements about it.
Paul Goldberg: Policy.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. All we have is the Truth Social post, so it’s necessarily a little bit limited in terms of the information that we have. But he has announced a plan to incorporate a 200% tariff on generic prescription drugs by 2029. There’s a two year grace period and then a year of 100% tariff, and then after that, a 200% tariff.
And the whole idea is to try to increase on-shoring. But I talked to some experts, well, some experts offered press calls, thankfully, understanding that this is a really complicated topic. And yeah, basically, read the story, but it seems like it might not really accomplish the goals that Trump is striving for.
And as a heads-up, we’re going to have Marta Wosinska, if I’m pronouncing that correctly, again, the perils of written journalism coming onto a podcast, but she will pronounce her name correctly next week. But we’re going to have her on the podcast to talk about how this policy actually affects oncology specifically, because obviously oncology has sort of its own unique little niche within the generics market more broadly.
Then we had a Trials & Tribulation, a guest editorial, and it was really interesting. It was a follow-up to the chronotherapy retraction story that I did a few weeks ago. These are chronotherapy experts, people who actually do specifically chrono-immunotherapy. And they had a response to that story that was kind of like, “Hey, there really is a lot more promise here than the sources that I spoke to for the last story were really putting forward.” And so they wrote a really wonderful little survey of what the literature looks like and why chronotherapy deserves real thought and consideration and almost like validation as a legitimate research avenue.
And then Sara and Katie worked on, but I think Sara mostly wrote, a Cancer History Project story. It was a podcast with Stephen Chanock and Otis Brawley who were two mentees of Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr. I’m sorry, you wrote the Fraumeni obit.
Paul Goldberg: No.
Jacquelyn Cobb: No, they did?
Paul Goldberg: No, Steve Chanock wrote it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Steve Chanock. Okay, got it.
Paul Goldberg: That’s why it was so good.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. So Chanock wrote an obit for Dr. Fraumeni when he passed away. And so this is now a deeper conversation with Otis Brawley about his mentorship, what Fraumeni was like as a mentor and the work that he did. It’s a really lovely story. There’s a AI created, not by us, but an AI created photo of Mount Rushmore with Fraumeni and Florence Nightingale and these epidemiology giants, and John Snow, who J-O-H-N Snow apparently was a epidemiologist. But the AI image jokingly includes J-O-N, Jon Snow from Game of Thrones.
Paul Goldberg: And that was done by Ned Sharpless.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: Well, it was done by AI for Ned Sharpless in the service of Ned Sharpless.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh God, it’s a whole box of …
Paul Goldberg: He put that funny thing up to send to Joe Fraumeni’s grieving staff and mentees. So he thought it was pretty funny and it is pretty funny.
Jacquelyn Cobb: It’s funny, and except for the Jon Snow bit, true. I think it reflects the enormity of Fraumeni’s work and in the field of epidemiology especially.
Paul Goldberg: Well, John Snow, in case anybody doesn’t know which I’m sure everybody does, was a British physician who about a hundred and some years ago discovered the source of cholera in London, and I’d say isolated it to one particular well. But the other Jon Snow I think is a good swordsman or some such.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I know too much about that Jon Snow. Actually, Sara asked me to-
Paul Goldberg: You do?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, I like Game of Thrones. Sara asked me because she doesn’t watch it. She was like, “Does anybody watch this? Can you write up a summary of who he is?” And I don’t think that this will resonate with you, Paul, but for any listeners who watch, I really struggled to come up with a quick, easy description of who he was that didn’t include spoilers in the show. So that was sort of my very small challenge in addition to that story or my editorial contribution to that story. I think I just said he was a character.
Paul Goldberg: No, I couldn’t watch that show because the only time I tried, because people were telling me I must see it, there were a bunch of dogs killed. And excuse me, you start killing dogs, even fictionally, you lose me forever. Sorry.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s fair.
Paul Goldberg: Sorry.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s fair. There are a lot of-
Paul Goldberg: A lot of dead dogs. No-
Jacquelyn Cobb: A lot of dead dogs. And I mean, if that’s your line, I think Game of Thrones surely crosses a lot of people’s line. There’s a lot of horrible things in that show, but somehow the … I know I’m not alone at least, but I definitely respect if people don’t want to do it. But anyway, before we become just a Game of Thrones review pod-
Paul Goldberg: I also find other things to do in my life still.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful.
Paul Goldberg: That’s gorgeous. Yes.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: Uplifting. Does anybody get the sense that this is August and we’re kind of moving towards a little break, which we sorely need? It’s like-
Jacquelyn Cobb: I don’t know if our reader or our listeners will necessarily be familiar with that, but just as context and a heads-up, we have a-
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, it’s a disclosure.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, it’s a disclosure that we are coming up on a three-week publication break in August, which as Paul said, is sorely needed.
But just to finish up, I just wanted to mention that there were some pretty interesting cancer policies last week. Specifically, FDA’s OCE published three final guidances focused on or all aimed toward increasing clinical trial enrollment. So that’s just interesting, just want to keep sort of a pulse on that. And there are other interesting cancer policies, so definitely go check them out.
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Jacquelyn Cobb: Anyway, do you want to talk about the prediction market story, Paul?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, it’s just really fun. What Sara did was pretty awesome. She called, well, she contacted five people, right?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, or six.
Paul Goldberg: And essentially got them all to … And they are … You have the list in front of you, yeah?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yep, yep. It’s the American Society of Clinical Oncology offered a spokesperson. The organization offered a response. And then we had Paul Thurman, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. We have, and again, I apologize for the spelling or the pronunciation, Quynh-Thu Le, group chair of NRG Oncology, Mark Ratain, Director of the Center for Personalized Therapeutics, and the Leon O. Jacobson Professor of Medicine, Chief Hospital Pharmacologist at University of Chicago Medicine. Sorry, he has a long title. And Primo Lucky Lara Jr., group co-chair of SWOG. I mean, a whole long list of names, but I think the key is that we got quite a-
Paul Goldberg: But we could have kept going.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: We could have kept going. But it was all basically the same. The concept, I mean, the message was, “Don’t do it.” Yeah, it’s like Mark Ratain’s line was, “This is just another opportunity for cancer people to get themselves into deep trouble,” which is true-
Jacquelyn Cobb: I think he said something a little bit more fun than that. Wait, can I read his thing?
Paul Goldberg: Oh, yeah. But they all had incredible amount of wisdom in those responses, and they were completely consistent, even Mark’s. And Mark was saying, “Well, you know?” But not really. It’s not a you know.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yes. So I think, I mean, just to read that, because it’s just so good. I want to-
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, go, go ahead.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Ratain said, “Prediction markets are another opportunity to violate the law, but if used correctly, there should not be a problem,” which is what you’re referring to. He’s sort of saying he’s not particularly worried about this. “Overall, I don’t think this is problematic for society, but certainly creates another opportunity for my colleagues to lose money and go to jail.” So I feel like-
Paul Goldberg: But he’s not worried.
Jacquelyn Cobb: He’s not worried. Well, I mean-
Paul Goldberg: He couldn’t care less if anybody falls for it, then goes to jail. I joined him with this lack of worry about it because it’s just another week, another good thing about being a journalist. But yeah, what really disturbed me, just immediately after I heard this over dinner a few days ago that this is happening, and first of all, I couldn’t believe it. And second, I said, “Equipoise. My God, the loss of equipoise.”
If you’re putting patients on trial and you are betting on that trial, unbeknownst to them, then you’re a very bad investigator. That’s one possibility. And this is hypothetical, I’m not talking about anybody specific because I hope everybody’s smart enough not to do this nonsense. And the other thing is if you’re on the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, DSMB, that means you really deserve to go to prison for that one.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to explain that a little bit, Paul, for people who might not be familiar?
Paul Goldberg: Well, because they see the results. They make the decisions.
Jacquelyn Cobb: They’re the ones that they see data that’s blinded even while it’s blinded so that they can check for really problematic safety signals that need to shut the trial down. Or if there’s the opposite, if it’s working perfectly well and you lose equipoise that way, that’s sort of the role of these people, just FYI.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Well, no, this is different. Equipoise would be in a different setting, but yes. Equipoise would be the investigator, DSMB is just criminal.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Well, no, sorry, sorry. What I meant was a DSMB totally separate from this story.
Paul Goldberg: Correct.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Their job is to check that you haven’t lost equipoise within the trial as it’s blinded to everybody else. They have secret access, or not secret access, but they have special access to see the blinded data as the trial is going on to ensure that.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. If you’re on the DSMB and doing this, then you really belong on the chain gang, which also functions like a committee.
Jacquelyn Cobb: What does?
Paul Goldberg: The chain gang.
Jacquelyn Cobb: The chain gang? I don’t know if I know what a chain gang is properly. I don’t know if I want to.
Paul Goldberg: I only know it from watching old movies.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Okay.
Paul Goldberg: But you would think that some decisions have to be made on the chain gang. Do we go to the right? Do we go to the left?
Jacquelyn Cobb: I am sure this is a funny joke. I am-
Paul Goldberg: It is a funny joke. It may not be that funny, but I tried. That’s all I know. I can rest assured I tried.
Jacquelyn Cobb: But yeah, keep going. Sorry.
Paul Goldberg: But seriously, it’s just a really fascinating thing when you look at something and you stare at it and it’s there in front of you and it’s actually happening, but you say, “Huh? How can it possibly be happening?” Are we all so stupid and criminal as to allow something like that? And why would you even want to bet? I mean, it’s different from, of course, pharma companies bet on drugs, but that’s a very different kind of betting, which is kind of grotesque.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Well, you’re talking about actually investing and trying, making a bet in terms of developing a drug. Is that what you mean?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. And investors bet on drugs. It’s a pretty well-regulated thing. But also, people who have inside knowledge such as members of the DSMBs would also end up on the chain gang. So it could be an interesting chain gang.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I’m so scared. I’m so scared.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. I bet on the trial, a result when they knew, and the other one could be insider trader of a different sort.
Jacquelyn Cobb: The insider trading. Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: So there’s many ways to get yourself into trouble, as Dr. Ratain said.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Well, that’s what I thought was interesting is … And I think that’s just because I align a little bit with Ratain on this, just out of opinion. But this does have a lot in common I think with the risks of insider trading in investing and stuff like that.
Paul Goldberg: It’s exactly that.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. But what I thought was interesting, the side of it that I didn’t consider was just if there’s a lot of publicity about a trial and the way it’s getting bet on specifically, even if there’s no insider trading or whatever the equivalent would be called in this case, that could really affect how potential clinical trial participants see or how they feel about the trial, even if it doesn’t have necessarily scientific or clinical implications.
You know how this stuff is? I’m thinking of, what was that? GameStop or whatever? This type of betting and online prediction market. Do you know what I’m talking about with GameStop?
Paul Goldberg: Oh yeah, it could be bad.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: I mean, when the doctor basically is going to be asked by a patient, “Are you putting me on this trial because you have money riding on it?” Yeah, it could be. It’s like the number of twisted ways in which this could work out is completely bizarre. It can also just kind of fail, just the whole idea.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Fail? What do you mean? It just wouldn’t really work.
Paul Goldberg: Yes.
Jacquelyn Cobb: It just doesn’t really take off.
Paul Goldberg: Fizzle out.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Well-
Paul Goldberg: Not every idiotic bet is taken and not every stupid game is played.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, that is true.
Paul Goldberg: And this was a stupid game. It’s so stupid that we all decided that there’s no way to deal with it otherwise than to put it on the cover of The Cancer Letter because holy mackerel, you could so easily blink and forget all about it until you hear it from someone at a cocktail party and you say, “What?” Some of it’s been going on for a while, apparently. It’s just that this year, this week, last month got into this and another prediction market had been doing it since last year.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yeah. I just don’t really understand, it just doesn’t feel necessary. But I think that that’s kind of how I feel about gambling in general. And I know that that’s sort of a different-
Paul Goldberg: We can’t do it, by the way.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh, I know. I know that.
Paul Goldberg: We can’t do that. I know that. And we can’t invest in pharma, so we can’t do any of those forms of betting.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, Yes. We have clear-
Paul Goldberg: Bet on horses like normal people.
Jacquelyn Cobb: So yeah, what I was mentioning, I mean, that’s true about you’re a patient, you go in, you ask, “Are you betting on this? Are you putting this …” What you said? And I feel like that’s sort of what came to my head when I thought about this. But what I hadn’t thought about was this point, and this is from Primo Lucky Lara Jr., the group chair of SWOG.
Paul Goldberg: Just call him Lucky Lara. It’s better. That’s what he likes.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Gotcha. He said, “Let’s say a patient sees that prediction markets are betting on the failure of a trial they are considering. Even if the trial is scientifically and ethically sound, they would then be likely to decline participation in the trial. Investigators and the public might be led to believe that the answer is already known if betting markets swing one way, they would therefore behave differently than they would otherwise.”
And I know that that’s sort of a minor thing, but obviously there’s the insider training side of things and that’s horrible. And Ratain said that’s not old news, but that risk is already there through the insider trading track, if you want to call it that.
Paul Goldberg: Track to the chain gang.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Okay.
Paul Goldberg: The committee.
Jacquelyn Cobb: The committee.
Paul Goldberg: The functions of the committee. That’s my line for the day.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I’m putting it in the notebook.
Paul Goldberg: Wearing stripe.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Because I think of insider trading as something that sort of the general public, or at least I don’t really like, “I’m not going to go do that.” But I could, I mean, I won’t because it’s not our job.
Paul Goldberg: You could get fired.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, I would get fired. But the prediction market stuff is just so much more accessible to the general public. So I think that’s the thing that I was interested in as I was reading this story is these other ways that you don’t really think of, that having clinical trials and FDA regulation on a general prediction market platform might impact clinical trial enrollment in this case, but just in general, clinical care. It’s weird.
My point I think is that there are innumerable, like you said, and unexpected, and I think there will continue to be unexpected implications and outcomes that are not so great ideally. Or not ideally, not so great probably, that come from this being available. I saw on Instagram or something, but it was just somebody being like, “This is so wonderful that people can gamble on these things that are life-saving research endeavors from the comfort of their own home.” You know what I mean? It’s just the fact that it’s like anybody can do this. It just sucks.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, yeah. It’s small D democratizing.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Democratized.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting because I mean things that are twisted, they’re called twisted because they’re twisted. And this is twisted.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yes, I agree.
Paul Goldberg: And it’s nice to be able to just say it. Not say it, we shouted it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Literally, Paul Thurman responded. The first thing that he said was, “Absolutely a horrible idea!” Oh, and that’s new way of saying-
Paul Goldberg: No, this is worth reading. I mean, this is, for those who still drink, definitely an excellent accompaniment to a Scotch. It will go well with Scotch.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: Even though I prefer vodka, this will go with Scotch.
Jacquelyn Cobb: This is appropriate with Scotch. Yeah, you’ll switch it up for this one.
Paul Goldberg: This is a Scotch kind of companion.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Good. Good. Good to know.
Paul Goldberg: [inaudible 00:24:23] the story. Yes. We should probably do books on tape kind of thing if we record some of this stuff. Well, it’s called a podcast. So here we are. We’re doing it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: We’re doing it.
Paul Goldberg: Right.
Jacquelyn Cobb: The last thing I just want to mention about Kalshi before we move on is the idea that … And this is all in the story, so definitely go look more if you’re interested. But the idea that this prediction market world is a little bit less regulated, harder to regulate because it’s just like we said, it’s like, I mean, democratize is such a positive word for what I’m describing, but it is accurate that it’s like anybody can do it. There’s not a whole lot of regulation. If a DSMB member’s cousin were to do it, it’s very gray.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s all in the story.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Yeah. And people do get caught for this all the time.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Yes.
Paul Goldberg: At least on the SEC end of things.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: You do get caught. You should count on getting caught.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: It will be unpleasant when you are.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, to say the least. But do you want to talk about any other stories, Paul? We could talk about the tariffs briefly. I just don’t want to talk too much about it because I feel like next week’s podcast will dive more into it, but do we want to just touch on it briefly?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. It’s interesting to see this idea come back. And I guess one of the things about economics is that knowing a little bit of it is more dangerous than knowing none. And I’m in the position of knowing a little bit.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I think same. I think that’s why I’m like, “Let’s just wait for the expert.”
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, I think so. But it’s really interesting how you can have the counter, the effect is not going to be what you think it will be because it does cost a fair amount of money, billions to start a new plant. And it’s really the problem here is that a lot of the generic drugs, which is what we’re talking about, are basically too cheap. And so what do you do when it’s impossible because of the tariffs or for whatever reason to import the drugs and nobody steps in? And if nobody steps in, then the drug just becomes unavailable.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Yeah. As if there’s not already concerns about shortages of generic drugs in oncology. It’s already, like you said, it’s a story that’s coming back rather than just appearing in terms of the generic shortages. The fact that Trump is imposing a tariff on generics is new. But the fact that it’s-
Paul Goldberg: Well, he talked about it and now he’s bringing back this idea because who knows? I don’t know. It’s a story that definitely we will be here to cover it because it’s a great time to be a journalist.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Indeed, it is. And yes, I think that we will get a lot more detail and in depth about that story next week, of which I’m very excited about. And yes, it’s a great time to be a journalist. Thank you for guiding us off, Paul. And listeners, I will talk to you next week with Marta Wosinska.
Paul Goldberg: That would be fantastic. That would be actually great to have an actual economist as opposed to two armchair economists who are going to get into more trouble. She would actually have an interesting point to make about gambling on clinical trials.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I’ll make sure to ask her. I’ll write it down.
Paul Goldberg: I don’t think she cared.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I’ll throw it in as a fun question at the end.
Paul Goldberg: It’s a fun question at the end. Gambling is a great economics problem. And anyway, again, my BA is …
Jacquelyn Cobb: Coming in. Yes. I was going to start going there that you have more expertise than I do with your BA in economics.
Paul Goldberg: Expertise is the wrong word for it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Well, something more than me. Education we could say. But all that to say-
Paul Goldberg: I am not sure I would even say that, but it’s something. Anyway, this is becoming a Jewish goodbye. We’re all saying goodbye and nobody leaves.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yep.
Paul Goldberg: So let’s actually say goodbye.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Goodbye.
Paul Goldberg: And thank you for joining us.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Thank you for joining us, listeners.
Paul Goldberg: Bye.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Thank you for joining us on The Cancer Letter Podcast, where we explore the stories shaping the future of oncology. For more in-depth reporting and analysis, visit us at cancerletter.com. With over 200 site license subscriptions, you may already have access through your workplace. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and share. Together, we’ll keep the conversation going.
Paul Goldberg: Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and thank you for listening.
