As Politicians Argue About China, US Patients Find Cutting-Edge Treatment There

Until recently, a Manhattanite might venture no more than a few dozen blocks to find the world’s most sophisticated cancer treatment. Cutting-edge American medicines have helped reduce the U.S. cancer death rate by about a third since 1990, and New York City hospitals deliver some of the best care in the country. But in January 2025, the city’s health systems had no good options for Debbie Doppelt, a 60-year-old jeweler with an unusual form of lung cancer that mostly afflicts nonsmokers like her. The Food and Drug Administration hadn’t yet approved sunvozertinib, a drug developed in China that targets the mutation driving Doppelt’s tumors. She had been through chemotherapy and surgery, but the cancer had now spread to her brain. And she didn’t qualify for the relevant clinical trials. Then an option emerged, in an offhand remark. “Too bad she’s not Chinese,” a doctor told her son Max Doppelt, who had organized his mother’s care since her 2023 diagnosis. “She could go to a pharmacy in China and buy it.” Within hours, mother and son had reached out to friends and relatives, one of whom procured a small supply of sunvozertinib from a contact living in China. A few months later, Max fl...