Recent Comments:
The Cancer Blog retires
The Cancer Blog
Nov 8th 2007 4:43PM Wow! You do have a lot of paranoia Michelle hchcec! Seriously, do seek help!
The Cancer Blog retires
The Cancer Blog
Oct 28th 2007 12:08AM What is your problem Michelle (hchcec)? You're a pathetic twit! You should consider getting some psychiatric help! You've been a pain in just about everybody's rump on this site, critizing just about every writer's post and any commentators that don't have "flat earth" ideolog theories like you have. One just needs to look at your diatribe in the second to last posting on this blog! Seriously, at first I thought you were humerous and entertaining but I really think you need help.
The Cancer Blog retires
The Cancer Blog
Oct 21st 2007 5:43AM I don't believe it was a business decision to terminate this and the other two medical blogs. I believe it was a personal decision. The intelligent writers who post on these blogs, and some of the commentators, were too free-thinking and had lost their independency from so-called "established" norms. When one doesn't "tow-the-line" of the establishment, you lose that independence.
The Cancer Blog retires
The Cancer Blog
Sep 22nd 2007 4:39PM Major health care issues are discussed on blogs more extensively than they could ever be discussed in academic articles. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is probably the most important part of most blogs. The interactive format allows rapid responses to medical and health care issues which frequently intertwine moral, ethical and legal concerns, and provides valuable feedback and commentary not available through traditional media. Blogs are increasing the visibility of laypeople medical experts, who share tips about treatment and care giving from personal experience, and others have relied on them for straight talk about their health issues and bloggers often provide links to other blogs they favor. As always, some cautiousness is needed on them because some bloggers can have a hidden agenda, like some of the main line medical and health care associations can have. But overall, independent thought (not to be confused with lack of evidence) can be cheerished on sites like this.
Are new age therapies leading us away from evidence and reason?
The Cancer Blog
Sep 11th 2007 12:48AM It's the same old "spin." Because a study does not have a prospective randomized clinical trial, there is no justification for it.
Pharma-based medicine is a refuge for robots whose batteries are dangerously low on power. It is a default function like "tilt" on a pinball machine. Like Quackwatch and others, there are a certain number of "allrightnicks" who have appointed themselves the arbiters of truth. It's just that you aren't allowed to play in their sandbox!
Medicine is a personalized service, one built around the uniqueness of each patient and the skilled physician's ability to design care accordingly. Sure, one can read scientific literature and understand statistics, but does it help them to understand how that should influence the treatment of the individual?
The future of cancer therapy needs to be thought of "outside the box" with personalized treatments for individual patients, and will require a combination of novel diagnostics and therapeutics.
Until the controlled, randomized trial approach has delivered curative results with a high success rate, the choice of physicians to integrate promising insights and methods, remains an essential component of cancer treatment advocacy.
Overall U.S. approval rate for cancer drugs is only 8%, according to Tufts study
The Cancer Blog
Sep 11th 2007 12:25AM A dysfunctional culture 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 achievment and publication even though their proven 'activity' has little to do with curing cancer.
Study Questions Dead-End Cancer Clinical Trials
http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/070910/study-questions-dead-end-cancer-clinical-trials.htm
Are new age therapies leading us away from evidence and reason?
The Cancer Blog
Sep 9th 2007 4:50PM Jeff
I believe hchcec knows she is being unethical and unprofessional. I believe she will not come clean.
Are new age therapies leading us away from evidence and reason?
The Cancer Blog
Sep 6th 2007 12:36PM http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/07/10/quackbusters_lose_against_homeopathy.htm
http://www.canlyme.com/quackwatch.html
Starving tumors of blood supply may pose risks, says study
The Cancer Blog
Sep 3rd 2007 9:47PM A recent study published in the journal of the American Cancer Society, led by Jeffrey Peppercorn of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center, along with three researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, found that 84% of trials with pharmaceutical-company involvement showed positive results, compared to 54% for trials without industry backing. Another previous study in oncology, looking at multiple myeloma, found that pharmaceutical studies reported positive results in 74% of trials compared to 47% of non-industry-sponsored trials.
An increasing number of drug studies are developed through collaborations between academic medical centers and drug companies. In fact, pharmaceutical-industry investment in research exceeds the entire operating budget of the NIH. It is important to understand the influence that industry involvement may have on the nature and direction of breast cancer research. Studies backed by pharmaceutical companies were significantly more likely to report positive results.
As the Haines study suggests more must be spent on analyzing drug data, we also need larger and more detailed studies to figure out why there is an association between pharmaceutical involvement and positive results. Some of the connection between industry and positive results may be because industry focuses on drug development and they do it well.
However, drugmakers are going directly to the consumer at a time when their products are indeed at the margins of evidence-based medicine. On one hand, pharmaceuticals advertise extensively and the advertising is manipulative in the extreme. On the other hand, even NCI-designated cancer centers do this sort of direct to consumer, hard sell advertising. And in cancer medicine, the media advertising is no more misleading than the one-on-one communication which often goes on between a chemotherapy candidate and an oncologist.
A Karolinska Institute in Sweden study showed that U.S. health care system is good at delivering expensive drugs, but that our health care system is not so good at simple medicine like preventive care. Our pharmaceutical-based health care system is very good at creating new health care products that will make a lot of money, but it it's something that has no chance of profit, forget it.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the United States does a good job of developing and delivering new and expensive drugs to cancer patients, because that is the only thing we're good at. But it'll take a rocket scientist to figure out how this makes for a better health care system.
Rash caused by EGFR inhibitors, including Tarceva, a positive sign, say researchers
The Cancer Blog
Sep 3rd 2007 4:50PM Of course there is Supplemental Data for Associated Cutaneous Toxicities caused by EGFR Inhibitors. It's an Evolving Paradigm in Clinical Management.
http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/full/12/5/610/DC1
