The Never-Ending Cancer Drug Shortage
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A shortage of basic chemotherapy drugs to treat cancer is jeopardizing the care of hundreds of thousands of patients. The drugs aren’t expensive, or patented—so where are they?
Guest: Ed Yong, science journalist at The Atlantic.
Host: Lizzie O'Leary
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next TBD. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by Royal London, the UK's largest mutual, life, pensions and investment company. |
| 0:08.0 | What even is a mutual anywhere? Well, Royal London is customer owned. |
| 0:12.0 | It has been since 1861. They work to support customers and wider society, |
| 0:17.0 | to help build financial resilience, while investing responsibly, |
| 0:21.0 | to help build a future worth returning into. |
| 0:23.0 | It really is, everyone's business. |
| 0:26.0 | Learn more at RoyalLondon.com slash mutuality. |
| 0:30.0 | Hey there, Interwebs. |
| 0:38.0 | Hope everyone's having a good night, right? |
| 0:41.0 | Oh my eyes look real dark in this lighting. That's rad. |
| 0:44.0 | This is a TikTok from a man named Chuck Jackson. |
| 0:47.0 | His handle is Chuck Fights Cancer, where he chronicles his treatment for squamous cell carcinoma. |
| 0:53.0 | The thing I want to talk about a little bit is this, this Carbo plan and other chemo drug shortage that's out there. |
| 1:01.0 | I tried to do a little research on this and I can't really find much on there other than, |
| 1:05.0 | there's been more than 40 states in the US so far that have run into this shortage. |
| 1:10.0 | Jackson's TikTok is from the end of May. And since then, the shortages of cancer drugs, |
| 1:16.0 | basic chemotherapy drugs have gotten so bad that they're threatening the care of hundreds of thousands of patients |
| 1:22.0 | across the country. So currently around 14 different chemotherapy drugs are in shortage. |
| 1:30.0 | That's Ed Young, a science writer for the Atlantic. |
| 1:33.0 | And some of those include things like cisplatin, Carbo platin, and methotrexate, |
| 1:39.0 | which are really frontline drugs. |
| 1:42.0 | These are generic drugs, pretty basic ones. And they are the foundations of chemotherapy |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.