cancer
oracknows | November 15, 2007Yesterday's mega-post left me a bit drained; consequently I've throttled my ambitions back a notch today in order to leave some energy to put together the weekly installation of Your Friday Dose of Woo tomorrow. Fortunately, just the topic presented itself: A story that's interesting and instructive (hopefully) but that won't take as much of my time to deal with.
But first, a brief recap. A couple of months ago, I discussed a highly dubious fundraising e-mail that was going around, apparently pushed by an organization known as Natural Solutions Foundation, about what seemed on first blush to…
terrasig | November 14, 2007...is the title of a Newsweek article by Jonathan Alter posted online last night that draws more attention to the Medicare restriction on reimbursements for radioimmunotherapeutic (RIT) drugs used to treat lymphomas. Surgical oncologist, Orac, and I have spoken about this issue in the last few days.
Alter admits his bias a bit, as he was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma back in 2004 and received RIT. Moreover, Alter's Newsweek colleague (and SoCal singer-songwriter), Jaime Reno, attributes RIT to his long-term remission.
The article opens as follows:
What if they found a cure for a…
oracknows | November 14, 2007Over the last couple of days, I've discussed "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) in terms of a meme upon which evolutionary forces are acting to select certain forms of woo over others in academia. Although, in my usual inimitable fashion, I probably carried the concept one step too far, in the end I concluded that the relationship between CAM and academic medical centers is probably best characterized as parasitic rather than symbiotic.
After I finished that post, I started thinking (always a dangerous thing). Regular readers know that I've sometimes raised a bit of a ruckus by…
oracknows | November 13, 2007Yesterday, inspired by a post by fellow ScienceBlogger Martin, I had a little fun discussing the evolution of "alternative" medicine (a.k.a. "complementary and alternative medicine" or CAM), specifically speculating about the possible selective pressures, positive and negative, that have influenced the course that its evolution took. Essentially, the discussion centered around whether, by its very nature CAM undergoes negative selective pressure for having as little effect as possible, positive or negative, a point I found somewhat, but not entirely, convincing. Although the post inspired a…
oracknows | November 12, 2007Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata has the full story.
In brief, Medicare has slashed reimbursement for two radioimmunotherapy drugs Bexxar (131I-tositumomab) and Zevalin (90Y-ibritumomab) to below acquisition cost. This is not some experimental therapy that's being denied, but rather a therapy with a established clinical efficacy. Naturally, this is likely to lead to most centers abandoning these drugs. Even worse, because private insurers base their reimbursement on the Medicare reimbursement rates, usually paying some percentage above them, this decision will almost certainly lead insurance…
oracknows | November 12, 2007I wish I had thought of this one, but I didn't. However, I never let a little thing like not having thought of an idea first to stop me from discussing it, and this particular idea is definitely worth expanding upon because (1) it's interesting and (2) it combines two of my interests, alternative medicine and evolution. I agree with parts of the idea, but it's not without its shortcomings. Indeed, I'd very much welcome any of the evolutionary biologists who read this blog to chime in with their own ideas.
Fellow ScienceBlogger Martin Rundkvist over at Aardvarchaeology has proposed a rather…
terrasig | November 11, 2007The travesty has come true, according to Karl Schwartz and Betsy de Parry of Patients Against Lymphoma.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has gone ahead with their plans to slash by half reimbursements to hospitals for two radioimmunotherapy drugs. For many hospital, reimbursement rates will be lower than their acquisition costs. We discussed this possibility back in August but had thought that CMS administrators would acknowledge the outcry from the lymphoma survivor/advocacy community, not to mention very strong statements from ASCO (American Society of Clinical…
oracknows | November 8, 2007I hadn't intended to write about this again, at least not for a while, but curiosity got the better of me. About a month and a half ago, I discussed a highly dubious story that was going around by e-mail about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whose mother supposedly "cured" him with "natural" treatments. As you might imagine, the story was riddled with incorrect-sounding medical information and inconsistencies. Earlier this week, through a highly credulous blogger going by the 'nym the Angry Scientist, I became aware of an update to the story, in which the names of the mother and child (Laurie…
revere | November 6, 2007We dwell a lot on the many unknowns about the bird flu H5N1 virus. What could make it easily transmissible between people? What determines what host it infects? What makes it so virulent? With the threat of a pandemic looming it can sometimes seem the virus is an especially, maybe even uniquely, wily foe. Every move we make it changes to outsmart us. We remain helpless. But the same is true of so many other deadly threats, including one that killed over 160,000 people in the US last year: lung cancer. What makes lung cancer so deadly? Why are some lung cancers so aggressive? What makes it…
oracknows | November 5, 2007About a month and a half ago, I discussed an e-mail that was being propagated far and wide that described the case of the mother of a 17 year old male who, or so the e-mail claimed, cured her son of stage IV melanoma using "natural means" and was supposedly thrown in maximum security prison by the Department of Child Services in California for "failing to properly care for her child." The e-mail, which was being used by an organization called Natural Solutions USA or Health Freedom USA (I was never quite sure), reproduced here, described what seemed on the surface to be a truly horrific abuse…
oracknows | November 1, 2007Despite the diatribes that appear here on a regular basis bemoaning the unscientific and sometimes dangerous claims made for so-called "alternative medicine" modalities, I'll be among the first to admit that in some cases it's not always clear what is "alternative" about some therapies. Indeed, there seems to be an intentional effort to "rebrand" some aspects of conventional medicine as being "alternative." Because these methods have a scientific rationale and at least some evidence that they work, by successfully marketing them as "alternative," woo-meisters can then point to them as…
oracknows | October 31, 2007Having gotten into the whole idea of blogging about peer-reviewed research yesterday and even using a spiffy new icon to denote that that's what I'm doing, originally I had planned on looking up another interesting article or pulling one from my recent reading list and blogging about it. Then, realizing that Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over after today, I happened to come across an article that reminds me of something that's appropriate for today, namely Halloween. Yes, it's that mercury maven of mavens, that tireless crusader who thinks he found that the Amish don't get autism and,…
oracknows | October 30, 2007...at least, that was my first reaction when I first read this reaction by the Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer to posts by Mark Chu-Carroll and myself pointing out the numerous flaws in the latest "study" being circulated to "support" a link between abortion and breast cancer.
Then I thought about it. That post was one of my more ambitious posts, and it reached a length even greater than the usual Orac-ian standard of logorrhea to match its ambition. Indeed, the post took me two or three times longer to put together than the typical heapin' helpin' of Respectful…
scientificactivist | October 27, 2007On November 6th (and now during early voting) Texans have the chance to vote on a variety of amendments to the Texas Constitution. One of these is Proposition 15:
The constitutional amendment requiring the creation of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and authorizing the issuance of up to $3 billion in bonds payable from the general revenues of the state for research in Texas to find the causes of and cures for cancer.
The full text of the resolution as passed in May by the Texas House and Senate can be read here and additional information is available here. Upon…
oracknows | October 25, 2007I approach this topic with a bit of trepidation. I say this not because I'm unsure that I'm correct in my assessment of the article that I'm about to apply some Respectful Insolence⢠to. Rather, it's because the last time I brought up anything having to do with abortion, it got ugly. The topic is such a polarized one that virtually anything one says is sure to attract vitriol. Regardless, though, this article by Dennis Byrne, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and the "study" to which it refers, are so appallingly idiotic that even fear of touching the third rail of American politics will…
oracknows | October 24, 2007I've always wondered, as I'm sure many of my readers have, whether human beings have it in them to delay their own death, even briefly. Very early in the history of this blog, a mere 11 days after I started it, I discussed a study that strongly suggested that we cannot. In brief, it looked at the common belief that people dying from cancer can somehow, through sheer force of will, hold death at bay for brief periods of time, usually until some milestone that they wanted to see one more time is reached, be it a birthday, anniversary, holiday, or whatever. After they reach that milestone, the…
terrasig | October 19, 2007In a post the other day, we noted that the semi-synthetic natural product, ixabepilone, approved for advanced breast cancer was derived from a soil bacterium. Colleague PharmCanuck reminded us that the soil is not a new source for drugs: the anthracyclines, daunorubicin and doxorubicin, are derived from a strain of Streptomyces found growing on a 13th century castle along the Adriatic Sea (hence the brand name for doxorubicin, Adriamycin). Amazingly, Adriamycin remains a foundation of many breast cancer chemo regimens more than 30 years after its approval.
While we speak here quite often…
terrasig | October 16, 2007As we discussed here yesterday, ixabepilone, a semi-synthetic anticancer drug derived from a soil bacterium was up for review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Just over a half hour ago the manufacturer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, announced that the drug has indeed been approved for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. The drug will be sold under the trade name, Ixempra.
"Previously, patients with aggressive metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer no longer responding to currently available chemotherapies had limited treatment options," said Linda Vahdat, M.D., Associate…
oracknows | October 16, 2007I know, I've been a bad blogger about this lately, but better late than never. A couple of blog carnivals for you:
surgeXperiences #106
Cancer Research Blog Carnival #2
Grand Rounds, vol. 4, no. 4
terrasig | October 15, 2007Perhaps not a cure but certainly another critical tool in the anticancer armamentarium.
If you've ever read our introduction to the left in my profile as to why this blog is called Terra Sigillata, you'd know that the first trademarked drug was dirt itself (or soil to be exact). Terra Sigillata was a special fatty clay harvested from the Greek isle of Lemnos and then punched into planchets with a special seal. Because it contained kaolin, a component of Kaopectate, it was useful for treating gastrointestinal disorders, and its high mineral content was useful for treating deficiencies that…