Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comA first-of-a-kind prostate cancer treatment that uses the body's immune system to fight the disease received federal approval Thursday.
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The basic rule of prostate cancer is that if you live long enough, you will get it. Prostate cancer is one of the most over-treated cancers known. The appropriate treatment for most prostate cancers is "watchful waiting." The screen for prostate cancer yields a huge percentage of false positives, fueling an increasingly profitable biopsy business. To pay $60-100k for a drug that will increase your lifespan by an average of 4 months (if taken in addition to other therapies) is just another way the for-profit medical industry of draining your last assets before you die.
A little nugget: around 70% of all men who have had prostate surgery (including robotic surgery) regret their decision. They, in most cases, traded "watchful waiting" for a life of phantom pain, erectile dysfunction, and diapers and accompanying odor. Physicians explain options but men seem to have a propensity to do their own homework after the surgery rather than before. They are seldom happy with what they find and almost 90% switch urologists within 6 months after surgery. MSNBC just had an article that referenced one man's trip through this nightmare entitled, I think "I Want My Prostate Back."
A good breakthrough, but the side effects are?
Sometimes, the side effects are worse than the actual disease itself.
Example: WARNING! May cause your penis to fall off.
Another article listed the SE as minimal. Fever, fatigue, chills nothing too worrisome and certainly nothing like chemotherapy SE.
The cost vs benefit isn't justifiable especially if our insurance companies or medicare are paying the tab. I dissagree on the fact that 70% of those having prostate surgery are sorry they did it. If caught early and you have a number of years left in a normal life it's highly justified. the loses vs benefits might be hard to take sometimes but staying alive is great.
Start buying stock now!
Seriously, why is this cancer targeted? For men only? What about cancer that attacks women? There are more women on the planet than men--is this a hard concept to fathom?
I have a feeling that if more men got breast cancer we would probably have a "vaccine" to combat that too.
Use Cannabis!
No side effects and you can grow in your backyard for FREE
6-12 months and we will be seeing the TV commercials for the class action law suite just like we see now for every new drug that comes along.
I did a study on the cost-benefit of nuclear medicine in 1982. One of the diseases I examined was prostate cancer. There was a review on the topic by Roswell Memorial Institute, in Buffalo. They compared four treatments: prostatectomy, radiation, hormone therapy, and doing nothing. At the time, all four had an identical treatment success rate of about 17%. Given all the side effects, why would anyone select either of the first three? But I would suspect that prostate cancer patients never see such comparisons, and statistics.
What was most interesting was that the treatment depended on the institution where the disease was diagnosed. if you went to John Hopkins, you got prostatectomy. If you went to Sloan-Kettering, you got radiation. What kind of science is this?
Since then, I've studied many chronic diseases, including different forms of cancer. There's little science behind the mainline exotic treatments; it's all about making money. The game is to suppress one symptom, while two others replace it. In the last few years, papers have been published by respectable institutions like Harvard Med, University of London, etc. They have found that a handful of modest lifestyle changes can eliminate most cancers, and other chronic diseases as well.
Well it's a start I guess.. am I understanding that right now they are only giving to men with advanced prostate cancer that has mets to other areas and isn't responding to hormone therapy? Is that because of the cost/limited supply? As they ramp up, will it then be an option for men with early stage prostate that don't want to go thru chemo or radiation or hormone therapy. (my BIL had that, he suffered horribly with hot flashes) 4 mos. doesn't sound like a whole lot of gain for such prohibitive cost. If it does what they say, teaches the immune system to detect and destroy cancer cells, wouldn't it basically be a possible cure? This company spent 15 yrs testing. I wonder why, most FDA drugs seem to be rushed to market in a couple of years. Is it because it's questionable that it really works.. or maybe it works too well .. which will be bad news for chemo pushers down the road..I don't believe you can eliminate cancer with nutrition and healthy lifestyles. Some things like not smoking, not using hormones etc. can lower your risks certainly. The cancer boards I visit (mother passed away from uterine cancer last year) are full of men and women who did everything right, healthy eating, exercise, didn't smoke, rarely drank , no hormones etc. Guess what, cancer.
For the most part, there are reasons that people get cancer, and they tend to be lifestyle-related. Obviously, there will be people who inherit genetic problems from ancestors who made the wrong choices, but the epidemiology studies provide the evidence for mainly lifestyle causation.
"The cancer boards I visit (mother passed away from uterine cancer last year) are full of men and women who did everything right, healthy eating, exercise, didn't smoke, rarely drank , no hormones etc. Guess what, cancer."
You're assuming you know what 'right' is, and that these people did everything 'right', 24/7. There are a tremendous number of things we do, eat, drink, breath, and to which we are otherwise exposed (e.g., cell phone radiation, WiFi radiation) that by themselves could cause cancer in selected individuals and in combination could cause cancer (and other chronic diseases) in far greater numbers of individuals.
The fix is not to poison oneself with $100K drugs, but rather to identify and then eliminate as many of these carcinogens as possible. Obviously, with increased cell phone use, greater childhood obesity, greater consumption of junk food, we are headed in the opposite direction. There tends to be a latency period of one to three decades for most carcinogens; recent studies show about one decade for cell phone radiation (brain gliomas). In probably two decades, there will be a tsunami of cancers and neurodegenerative diseases because of the technologies that were expanded in the past decade.
Ron, I find your comment incredibly offensive. I am 25 and was just diagnosed with Signet Ring Cell Adenocarcinoma, a very rare form of colon cancer (less than 0.1% of colon cancers). I was 6'2" 165lbs (145lbs after total colecectomy), never smoked a day in my life, don't drink and exercized 5 times a week. Yesterday I went over the genetic test results with my oncologist and this is not a genetic cancer. So please Dr. Ron, tell me where I went wrong or stop giving out medical advice, which you are obviously not qualified.
Well you obviously know your stuff Ron and I'm impressed at how you threw the word tsunami in there.. a perfect storm eh?? I am not disputing that lifestyle choices and genetics do play a part in many cancers. However, I believe if we live long enough, we will all get cancer unless something else claims us first. As the body ages, it wears out, the immune system weakens and cancer like water finds it's way in thru the path of least resistance. I understand that you like most people want to believe that if you make all the Right choices you will never have to worry about cancer. We all want to feel like we are in control . Oh that will never happen to me... I respectfully disagree. I do agree that the "Fix" is not 100K drugs.. in my mother's case, the "Fix" was 4 months of hell before she died. When we questioned her dr. about what happened his response boiled down to , "I dunno.. win some, lose some"
Lauren-999861 I am very sorry to hear about your cancer diagnosis and wish you well. In the last couple of years, I have become all too familiar with cancer. My mother (uterine), My BIL (stomach) and a good friend (Breast). Cancer strikes young children, the very old and everyone in between. No one is immune from it (except Ron) and most of the time causation is not known. (although Ron is apparently working on a complete list) They say it isn't one disease but many diseases. No two people are alike and no two cancers are alike. Cancer isn't a punishment, nobody deserves cancer. Yes probably the vast majority of us have at least one or two unhealthy lifestyle habits and I don't believe in tempting fate but ultimately I think it boils down to the luck of the draw. Cancer has been around for eons . Long before WiFi and cell phones.
Lauren,
I am sorry to hear about your cancer diagnosis. As in Ledgeroo's case, I am only too familiar with it. My sister died from colon cancer and my father died from leukemia. That's one of the motivations for my having studied chronic diseases, especially cancer. I never stated that anyone was immune, nor do the epidemiology studies state that lifestyle changes guarantee immunity. They increase the chances for immunity substantially, but they do not confer absolute immunity. People react differently to the same stimuli, and especially to combinations of stimuli. The best we can do with lifestyle changes is improve the statistics; that's really all I meant to say.
I have to agree with Chris,prostate cancer is one of the most overdiagnosed cancers there is and most men will die from something else before prostate cancer. Surgery,radiation and chemo should be the last choice.The first choice should be alternative medicine.I lost my mother and mother in law to cancer and I saw first hand the impact of surgery and chemo.All this new drug does is add millions to the drug companies wallets,just like all the other drugs.People need to understand that cancer is a $200 billion dollar industry and when people are no longer sick the pot dries up.Always follow the money people.There are 1000 lobbyists working for the drug companies and we all know,or should know,where all that lobbyist money ends up.
The FDA approves a pricey vaccine of limited value for prostate cancer but still hasn't okay'd the HPV vaccine (which thousands of men have already received of label and out of pocket) for men which would protect them from penile cancer, anal cancer, some throat cancers and genital warts. There's something wrong with that picture. By the way, Sandra Bullock celebrated her adoption by having the boy circumcised. Someone call Children's Services. Welcome to Hell, kid!
I am wondering if this is one of the Cancer Drugs Senator Dodd took money from the Pharmaceutical Companys for out on Martha's Vineyard to guarantee a 12 year high price guarantee???
They surely got you by the Huevos now and your Pocketbook,,A big thank you to the Demonrats!
What?? They have breast cancer awareness month and all that.. what about prostate awareness month?
I agree. I would like to see a uterine cancer month. My mother passed away from it last year. A lot of people are under the mistaken impression that it is always caught early and a simple hysterectomy and you're "Good as new" not true . My mother's cancer was not diagnosed until very advanced and then only after she had bleeding/spotting. Prostate cancer may be overdiagnosed but it can still kill. My grandpa had it. I was pretty young at the time, I think his was diag. very late and ultimately it's what killed him.
Seems to me, the new drug Provenge is simply an affirmation that the body's own immune system is the best cure after all of most diseases. Maybe, the medical profession shouldn't have bombarded men's bodies with toxic radiation and chemo BEFORE trying (the prohibitively expensive) Provenge??? Prostate cancer is treated a lot less aggressively in the U.K. with the EXACT same outcomes. Since when does GOOD medicine EQUAL TOXIC OVERKILL? In this country, if the disease doesn't kill a person the cure will!!! In my husband's case, what started as border-line prostate cancer (we later learned) became PC through inappropriate radiation seed implants and frequent radioative body scans. Thank you toxic medicine overkill!!
I find it amazing people will believe the 'treatments' that would make a healthy person seriously ill would make a seriously ill person healthy.
The President's Cancer Panel has issued its latest report (http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf). In it, they emphasize that the environmental causes of cancer have been grossly under-estimated. While I don't believe the Report goes far enough, they are leap years ahead of what gets reported in the press.