This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of new orphan drugs on premature mortality from rare diseases … estimate models using two alternative definitions of premature mortality, several alternative criteria for inclusion in the set … of rare diseases, and several values of the potential lag between new drug approvals and premature mortality reduction …

I assess the impact that pharmaceutical innovation had on cancer mortality in Mexico during the period 2003–2013, by … investigating whether there were larger declines in the age-standardized mortality rate of cancer sites (breast, lung, colon, etc …. The estimates indicate that new drugs launched during 1991–2001 reduced the age-standardized cancer mortality rate by 16 …

or physician. However, this level of analysis is mostly limited to the use of in-hospital mortality rates and is …

myeloma mortality rate using longitudinal country-level data on 26 countries during the period 2005-2009. Countries that had … larger increases in the number of chemotherapy regimens had larger subsequent declines in myeloma mortality rates …, controlling for other factors. The estimates imply that chemotherapy innovation reduced the age-adjusted myeloma cancer mortality …

study was subject to a number of major methodological flaws. Many of their claims pertain to the role of infant mortality …. I show that infant mortality was not an important determinant of the growth in U.S. life expectancy during the period … that I studied, and that my estimates are completely insensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of infant mortality …