Supply of Crucial Leukemia Drug May Run Out in Weeks

Methotrexate, a crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.

“This is dire,” said Valerie Jensen, associate director of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug shortages program.  “Supplies are just not meeting demand.”

Methotrexate treats acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, which most often strikes children between 2 and 5 years of age.  It’s an unusually virulent cancer of white blood cells that are overproduced in bone marrow and invade other parts of the body.

To put this crisis in perspective, consider the U.S. spent $800 billion during the Iraq War.  What would Jesus do?