Wasted Cancer Hope
In a Post oped, a cancer doc admits to impotence:
My patients seek state-of-the-art therapy. … Almost all of them have insurance, … their access to care is virtually limitless. We employ the latest [everything] … Yet, despite the many recent advances in detection and treatment, of the 50 patients, 40 of them are likely to lose the fight. … When it comes to cancer care, we’re not getting what we pay for. … Few cancer clinical trials are designed to “cure” patients. They are commonly aimed at … an extension of average survival from 5 months to 6 months. ..
Globally, cancer care is a medical luxury. With some diseases such as colon cancer, the treatments alone cost more than $15,000 a month, yet on average add only a few months to survival. Most poor countries do not support any cancer care; most developed countries highly restrict it because of its cost and limited effectiveness. The United States is the only place on Earth with relatively unfettered access to cancer care, including the latest medicines, sophisticated scans and high-tech radiation, all of which are very expensive. But despite their more limited access, cancer patients in other high-income nations may live longer and with a higher quality of life than patients in this country. …
I frequently ask my students and peers if there is a cancer drug today that they would pay for out of pocket if they had to. … After a long pause, someone invariably will say “Gleevec,” … a true magic bullet. Very few cancer drugs can be described as having this kind of value.
Amazingly, he concludes:
Oncologists are optimists, and I am proud to be among them. I truly believe we can cure cancer. I care greatly for my patients and am doing everything in my power to improve and lengthen their lives. When I offer a clinical trial to a patient, I am hopeful that it will be better than the standard treatment. I am optimistic that health-care reform will not simply provide everyone with insurance that will cover the “standard of care” but will also force us to determine the true value of treatments.
This gives “optimism” a bad name. He admits his profession wastes vast resources selling false hope, but we are supposed to let that slide because he is proud to be “hopeful”?
SRT501 , a GSK resveratrol based drug that will likely never get marketed because it may be too close to regular resveratrol, is being tested on 15 colon/liver cancer patients. 5g a day.
The resuts are due this month.
One promising sign is last month's study that showed regular resvertarol stopped the spread of cancer (liver?) in 70% of mice taking it as opposed to jusr 4% in the control group.
Multiple Myeloma results for SRT501 will be in late next year. Alzheimes and Prakisons also on dock for trials.
It looks like GSK is banking on the much more powerful SRT1701 or SRT2401 drugs they hope to market in 2012-2014.
It's weird, but it actually has some truth behind it. An analysis of health care costs (discussed in Overtreated) finds that the more religious, "red" areas in the middle of the country have a much higher expenditure on this type of questionably useful end-of-life prolonging care as compared to the coastal "blue" areas, which are significantly less religious.
Of course, saying that it is specifically religion that causes this difference doesn't follow. But it would not surprise me if the same type of mentality supports both high religiosity and high faith in ineffectual medical intervention.