Monday, February 22, 2010

Common Wisdom Not Wise...

...when it comes to lung cancer. The big "C," commonly considered cancer, is an automatic death sentence is a mistaken belief. Yes, it is "the most lethal cancer in the United States" but doctor can catch it in time and recovery is possible. If you're the kind of person who does the old "wait and see" for treatment because you don't have enough insurance or either don't have enough money to buy either your current medications or can't pay your co-pay for every doctor's visit that delay can mean a death sentence. So maybe common wisdom is wise but it more of a "self fulfilling prophesy" than a forgone conclusion. Believing it to be so and the depression that can ensue from having a fatalistic "doom and gloom" attitude can do more to prevent treatment and recovery.

We bet you think we just make this stuff up as we go along don't you? We don't. Christopher Lathan, MD, MS, MPH "an oncologist in the Division of Population Sciences at Dana-Farber, is the first author of the report in the journal Cancer. Senior author is Gary Bennett, PhD, of Duke University's Global Health Institute. Both whites and blacks in the survey "grossly underestimated" the bleak outlook associated with a diagnosis of lung cancer — only 15 percent of patients survive for five years."
"Many said 50 percent when the true number is 15 percent. There were three survey questions on which blacks and whites diverged significantly. African-Americans were more likely than whites (53 percent vs. 37 percent) to say they were confused by too many recommendations on how to prevent lung cancer. "This is shocking," says Lathan. "There is only one recommendation to decrease the chance of getting lung cancer. Stop smoking and avoid tobacco smoke." (Dana-Farber)
Dana-Farber (DF) is a Boston Mass based research center founded "in 1947, Dana-Farber has been committed to providing cancer patients with the best treatment available today while developing tomorrow's cures through cutting-edge research."

Last September DF discovered a protein that can aid in stopping cancer from spreading. Unfortunately the discovery that is on going doesn't appear to offer much hope to suffers of lung cancer. When Dana-Farber made Science magazine's "top ten breakthroughs of 2008" it had nothing directly to do with cancer or stopping cancer. The hope the center offers is to individuals who catch the lung cancer's in time and survive their surgeries thanks to "Yolonda Colson, MD, PhD, (who) is testing a small solution to the problem of lung cancer recurrence following surgery – small enough to fit millions of times into a grain of sand."

While the researchers at Dana-Farber have been searching for effective cancer medicines since 2003 with nearly $12 million in research fund and what's there final recommendations to prevent lung cancer? Stop smoking. Dana-Farber is no CUBA which, with less funding and no American tax dollars spent developed a lung cancer vaccine for terminal lung cancer patients. "CimaVax EGF does not prevent or cure lung cancer. It is a therapeutic vaccine which stimulates the patient's body to make an antibody against the epidermal growth factor (EGF), which is a key driver causing lung cancer cells to grow." Unfortunately the vaccine works better on the younger patients than the older. What it is more than anything else is hope to the hopeless.

No comments:

Post a Comment