Companies are increasingly using fast-track approval processes to get unproven treatments to patients.

One ALS drug made $400 million in sales for its maker. It doesn’t work. A cancer treatment brought in $500 million. That one turned out to have no effect on survival. A blood cancer medication made nearly $850 million before being withdrawn for two of its uses. That drug had been linked to patient deaths years prior.

All of them were allowed to be sold to Americans because of the US Food and Drug Administration’s drive to get new drugs to patients