Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[BIOChecker4]

I was provided with a recording of a recent STAT News biotech conference in New York in which a panel of biotech investors discussed the current state of affairs in biotech and responded to questions from the moderator and the audience. There were a number of questions and a lot of discussion about Scott Gottlieb and the FDA. To summarize, there was overwhelming support for Dr. Gottlieb and the FDA. The professional biotech investors were unanimous in their assessment that the FDA is doing a good job of expediting drug approvals while ensuring drug safety. The fact that the US is behind many other countries in terms of money spent on healthcare versus life expectancy has been the subject of recent articles. The reasons for this sad state of affairs is due to the amount of expensive medical technologies Americans utilize, the high cost of healthcare in the US and prescription drug prices in the US (none of which is controlled by FDA). For additional information, see this article from 2015 from The Commonwealth Fund: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/press-releases/2015/oct/us-spends-more-on-health-care-than-other-nations. I note that the FDA is not even mentioned in the article.