$5.8 Billion, page-38

stockrock, I don't agree that all clinical trials have the ethical problem of who gets the active and who the placebo. In too many cases (ask me) the active arm either fails or can cause serious harm or even death (seen in a trial very recently). Placebo doesn't by any measure automatically be the less desirable arm.
The point of the vast majority of trials is that they are trials. Trials to establish previously unknown effects of the therapy, beneficial or otherwise.
In the case of MPC-150-IM, it is already accepted that there are no harmful effects. And if the interim results equal the phase 2, in the minds of some of us the benefits are no longer unknown.

I accept that this is a field for high academics and my optimistic, self-interested musing won't sway the FDA.

Your last paragraph doesn't reflect the real situation for CHF sufferers. Each hospitalisation is distressing, expensive, and can be terminal. You are right in this, nothing works as well as MPC-150-IM in keeping patients out of hospital. And allowing a better quality of as well as longer life. If the FDA doesn't do everything possible within the parameters of its own rules to accelerate availability of this therapy then they will be denying much benefit to many.