ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REGARDING OVARIAN CANCER & RADIATION/CHEMOTHERAPHY BY GREG PAWELSKI
Drug treatment of cancer: No progress in three decades.
The March 22, 2004 issue of Fortune
(PDF )Fortune has an excellent article which shows that there has been no real progress in the treatment of the most common forms of cancer. Entitled "War on Cancer: Why the New Drugs Disappoint," the article cites NCI data showing that US cancer mortality rates have increased and age-adjusted cancer mortality rates in response to treatment have not improved in several decades, despite the introduction of many new drugs.
The article indicts the "cancer investigator" culture, which prizes the exhaustive examination of trivial hypotheses, while eschewing support of "cancer discoverer" type research, attempting to create entirely new paradigms of cancer treatment. In the words of the author, a large and broad group of "experts offered testimony that, when taken together, describes a dysfunctional 'cancer culture' - a groupthink that pushes tens of thousands of physicians and scientists toward the goal of finding the tiniest improvements in treatment rather than genuine breakthroughs that rewards academic achievement and publication over all else."
The author goes on to note that "investigators rely on models that are consistently lousy at predicting success -- to the point where hundreds of cancer drugs are thrust into the pipeline, and many are approved by the FDA, even though their proven 'activity' has little to do with curing cancer." The article specifically condemns the acceptance of models for cancer treatment (e.g. mouse models, established cell line models, molecular mechanisms) which have been of limited relevance to drug activity in real human cancer.
Gregory D. Pawelski
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