Surrogate end points are bad for your health

If I told you that a drug went on sale on 1st September 2015, which involved fortnightly injections at a cost of £4,000 a year and for which trials on incidents or deaths had not even started, you might be shocked. That’s exactly what happened last week. A drug named “Repatha” went on sale, having been “granted marketing authorisation” (not approval?!) by the European Medicines agency on 21st May 2015.