Why Patients Turn Down Clinical Trials
To the Editor:
Re “Lack of Study Volunteers Is Said to Hobble Fight Against Cancer” (“Forty Years’ War” series, front page, Aug. 3):
Re “Lack of Study Volunteers Is Said to Hobble Fight Against Cancer” (“Forty Years’ War” series, front page, Aug. 3):
I read with interest your article about the chilling effect that low recruitment for clinical trials has had on the search for meaningful treatments.
Patients can play a critical role in the search for cures, but it is time we rethink the entire paradigm surrounding clinical trial design and recruitment.
Clinical trials offer patients some say in their own destinies, and to leave a legacy that may save others, even if it’s too late to save themselves.
Unfortunately, the current system governing clinical trials gives patients concrete reasons to balk at participating. Often, clinical trials are aptly named: they are trials — difficult and exhausting, at a time when a patient’s physical and emotional capacities are already stretched thin.
Within each of us is a Rosetta Stone that could unlock the potential to cure disease, but it requires that we reconsider how we approach treating a seriously ill patient — and how we approach being one.
Margaret Anderson
Washington, Aug. 4, 2009
The writer is chief operating officer of FasterCures, which aims to accelerate the pace of medical research and development.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/opinion/l07cancer.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
The writer is chief operating officer of FasterCures, which aims to accelerate the pace of medical research and development.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/opinion/l07cancer.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
1 comment:
I read that article too and could not agree more. It was said"Within each of us is a Rosetta Stone that could unlock the potential to cure disease, but it requires that we reconsider how we approach treating a seriously ill patient — and how we approach being one."
Well even if you find a cure or a stabliztion of cancer, it is tough to get the clinical Oncologists and the drug mauufcturer on board. They want to have their drug used as a single agent as opposed as a combination therapy. In Melanoma, the Beast has so many pathways to evade the immune system,that Combination makes real sense.
Please check out a paper on Melanoma Missionary called "Melanoma and the Magic Bullet". You will be amazed on how this "three combination therapy save my life and stablized my disease.
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