Repurposed Drugs Pose an Ethical Challenge for Physicians

A recent article (with 504 references!) published in Signal Transduction and Target Therapy explored many of these interventions, their potential mechanism of action, and the current understanding of their benefits.1 I also came across a YouTube video by The Economist about a woman with metastatic breast cancer who was told she only had "5 years to live. Unfortunately, this fallacy is common in health care.3 Currently, using repurposed drugs puts physicians in an ethical conflict. On the one hand, these are inexpensive drugs with usually tolerable and manageable toxicities, so the overall financial and health care cost is low.