"Fixing Cancer's Cancer: The High Cost Of Treatment"

[tallguy2]

Fellow travelers: this article popped up on my news feed today.

folks.pillpack.com/fixing-c...

Please read the entire article. This oncologist is making some sense. It's not just the financial cost that she's talking about. It's also the human cost. I invite your comments.

IMHO there isn't enough work being done to intercept PCa while it is still encapsulated. Waiting until the PSA hit 4.0 and doing a biopsy didn't work for me...and to believe some doctors won't order a PSA test for their patients! The fairly new prostatic MRI or the new urine tests being developed as diagnostic tools may be the answer, but neither are "standard of care" and some insurance won't pay for the MRI.

[tom67inMA]

I think she is just stating the obvious, and suggesting an obvious but partial solution. Of course we need better screening tests, but I doubt screening tests will ever be perfect, and even for men who are detected early and "cured", there is still a meaningful amount of recurrence.

If you look further back, more than 100 years, the situation was much worse. People died slow, painful deaths from cancer. There was surgery before there was anesthesia. Think about that for a moment. There weren't antibiotics either. Surgically removing the cancer usually killed the patient before the cancer would have. (this is based on reading some of "The Emperor of All Maladies" recently).

Yes, we still treat patients by "poisoning" them with docetaxel, but it's now given with steroids and anti-nausea medicines to control side effects. We have medications to restore white blood cell counts. We know to give it earlier in the disease process for better results.

I don't have a solution for the financial cost of treatment, other than to say pure capitalized medicine isn't working. There's problems with socialized medicine as well. It's a shame people can't get along these days and find a real solution that uses ideas from both sides.

[Escudilla]

It's a very good article.

The system takes care of itself with only requisite care for the patient. We have to take care of ourselves by busting through, and finding our own solutions. We need to manipulate the system to our own ends. We can't be passive players.

We have to fight like the AIDS folks did. They found tolerable, multi-drug solutions without billion dollar 3 phase studies. They were willing to experiment on themselves, and let the science catch up later. They weren't lab rats for the medical machine.

A terminal patient should be able to treat themselves with any therapy that they can afford. We shouldn't have to plead with our doctors for a reasonable prescription. Why are we being treated with mono-therapies, when our pets can get better results with inexpensive combinations?

We need to call out the price manipulators, when they increase the cost of an inexpensive old drug by hundreds of times when we discover that it also kills cancer. We need to change legislation to allow more control of our own therapies.

We need to stop acting like victims.

[j-o-h-n]

Go figure.... If we all gave the money that's spent on Halloween to fight cancer, who knows if that would put a dent in our war against the meanies.....

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Wednesday 12/04/2019 6:02 PM EST