(TIME) – If there’s no carboplatin or cisplatin to be had, patients might be given another, less-optimal chemotherapy. Or doctors might try spacing the doses out more than they usually would, trying to stretch the supply. Some fear that these shortages, which have been ongoing since 2023, might make cancer more deadly. In June, the U.S. Pharmacopeia, a nonprofit scientific group, released their latest report on drug shortages, which revealed that the average duration of shortages for drugs of all kinds has more than doubled since 2019.  

Why is this happening? The reasons, it turns out, are essentially economic, and have to do with hospitals paying as little as possible for these lifesaving drugs—so little, in the end, that few companies can afford to make them. (Read More)