Author/N.Y. Times essayist points to possibility of lengthy extended life for cancer patients

A revolution in cancer treatment — involving multiple drugs — may be within the grasp of modern medicine. 

That's what's posited in a guest essay in The New York Times this week by Kate Pickert, author of Radical: The Science, Culture, and History of Breast Cancer in America.  

The author starts off by citing as an example a woman who's been kept alive, despite having metastatic cancer, for nine years by taking "a series of eight drug regimens…including three as part of clinical trials." The patient in question, she reports, "switches from one medication to another when it becomes clear that a treatment doesn't work or has stopped working because her cancer has figured out how to resist its efforts."

This approach, the writer says, "is increasingly becoming a standard of care for patients facing diagnoses that were once death sentences." For those patients, she adds, "cancer is more like a chronic disease than a one-time catastrophic event."

What's happening now is in no way proclaiming that a cure for cancer is imminent, but acknowledging instead that "the landscape for many cancer patients has changed tremendously in just the past five years," her Times essay declares.

Dr. Jedd Wolchok

The article quotes Dr. Jedd Wolchok, oncologist and director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine: "The pace of progress is most certainly accelerating. There are so many things converging."

At the end of her piece, Pickert talks about her own situation (she's had chemotherapy, drug treatment, and radiation for breast cancer) and notes that if her cancer returns, "which is unlikely at this point, I will benefit from a wide array of drugs — many of which were approved in the past five years."

Within 24 hours of the Times column, a story by Katherine Ellison appeared in The Washington Post that totally supports the idea of cancer becoming a chronic, treatable disease. 

That concept alone can lower anxiety, and that relief is crucial for cancer patients who are all too aware that more than 600,000 Americans are expected to die of the disease this year.

Despite that statistic, the Post story proclaims, "even some of the most fearful cancers today are increasingly survivable — provided they're addressed with care and vigilance that may span months to years to a lifetime."

That notion's addressed by positive numbers, the article proffers, explaining that of the 18 million U.S. residents with a history of the disease, "for many of them, cancer has become less an imminent threat than a chronic illness, serious but not necessarily deadly."

More good news? The death rate from all cancers, according to an American Cancer Society report released in January, is down almost a third since 1991.

Ellison's story quotes Lidia Chapira, breast-cancer expert and medical professor at Stanford University: "We're not quite there yet, but we're moving closer to the situation we have with HIV patients, in that today even people with incurable cancers may be living for decades. I'm still treating patients who were diagnosed decades ago, while my colleagues are seeing people in their 50s and 60s who had cancer as children."

Information on newer drugs and treatments can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers. 

Biden's wife may use her skin cancer to amp up the push for screenings and the search for a cure

President Biden's wife just underwent a surgical procedure for two common skin cancers, with a third remaining a question mark.

Dr. Jill Biden

According to an Associated Press story by Darlene Superville on Monday, a lesion that doctors found above Dr. Jill Biden's right eye was removed last week "and confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma — a highly treatable form of skin cancer."

A second lesion, from the left side of her chest, was removed after being found while the 71-year-old First Lady was being prepped for the removal of the first. That, too, was confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma.

A third lesion from her left eyelid is being tested.

It is expected the cancers will spur her to amplify her long-time advocacy for "research into curing cancer" and her urging of people to get "regular screenings," Superville's article indicates.

POTUS' wife has been an advocate regarding the disease since 1993, long before her son's death in 2015 from brain cancer.

Her advocacy stems from four girlfriends — "including her pal Winnie, who succumbed to the disease" — being diagnosed with breast cancer. She confirmed in a speech last year that "Winnie inspired me to take up the cause of prevention and education," the AP story reports.

That initial impetus, the article continues, "led her to create the Biden Breast Health Initiative, one of the first breast health programs in the United States, to teach 16- to 18-year-old girls about caring for their breasts. Biden was among the staffers who went into Delaware's high schools to conduct lectures and demonstrations."

Her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs, and father, Donald Jacobs, died of cancer — in 2008 and 1999, respectively. A few years ago, Superville's piece adds, "one of her four sisters needed an auto-stem cell transplant to treat her cancer."

According to the AP piece, her spokesperson, Vanessa Valdivia, declares that "the First Lady's fight against cancer has always been personal. She knows that cancer touches us all."

"Nothing like 'I've been there, done that' and being personally involved, [agrees] Myra Putin, a First Lady scholar at Rider College," the story notes.

When Beau Biden died in 2016, the current president was vice president. Shortly thereafter, he "helped push for a national commitment to 'end cancer as we know it."

Joe Biden resurrected what was known as the Cancer Moonshot initiative after he became president, and "aded a new goal of cutting cancer death rates by at least 50% over the next 15 years, and improving the experience of living with and surviving cancer for patients and their families," Superville's story explains.

In the years between Joe Biden serving as vice president and running for the top office, both Biden's headed up the Biden Cancer Initiative, a charity. 

More information on advocacy and treatment of the various forms of the disease can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Author raps failed War on Cancer, 'fad projects'

Researcher pooh-pooh's Biden's 'cancer moonshot' proposal, says it 'evokes sense of deja vu'

Vice President Joseph Biden's proposed "cancer moonshot" is unlikely to find a cure for the disease, according to at least one expert.

Vinay Prasad

In an op-ed piece written for The Washington Post, Vinay Prasad, a cancer researcher, author and assistant prof at Oregon Health and Science University, writes that the veep's plan "evokes a sense of deja vu" reminiscent of the 1970s and the ushering in of the War on Cancer — which, he says, "was largely unsuccessful at generating better treatments."

Last year was the original target data of that so-called "war."

It clearly passed without a victory.

Biden's proposal, which urged new funding and increased data-sharing, called for scientists to collaborate so they could overcome "cancer politics" and find a cure.

He 'd apparently suggested the moonshot after meeting with almost 200 oncologists, scientists and benefactors in the cancer community and finding an excess of "competition, territorialism and resistance to information-sharing."

He subsequently altered his goal to doubling the rate of progress, meaning that researchers would accomplish in five years what normally would take 10.

Prasad contends the major flaw in the proposal, introduced in January by Biden following the cancer death of his son, Beau, is that "thinking you will substantively improve cancer treatment by altering how it is regulated is like thinking you can run a faster mile by buying a new stopwatch."

The efficacy of cancer drugs, Prasad says, is beyond the Food and Drug Administration's control — and, regardless, "no matter what we do with the FDA, it can't produce better medicines."

The co-author of the 2015 book, "Finding Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives," also believes "if we are going to make real progress against cancer, we must acknowledge that…marginal gains — achieved a the price of substantial cost and toxicity — are just not good enough."

He ends his article with this:

"A commitment to funding science generally, and not just fad projects or treatment, in time of both budget surplus and shortfall, would be a true moonshot for the United Staes. Sadly, this is the one moonshot no one in politics seem to have the courage to fight for."

"Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers, touches on how politicians have historically dealt with — and not dealt with — that disease.

Are researchers, discoveries being cloistered?

Biden urges end to 'cancer politics' but more teamwork among docs, scientists, donors

Vice President Joseph Biden

It's a presidential election year so, naturally, there's lots of disturbing politics (no matter where you're positioned on the bell curve).

Perhaps none more upsetting, however, than the politics of the cancer world that, according to Vice President Joseph Biden, is the greatest obstacle to curing the disease.

According to a recent Associated Press story by Josh Lederman, Biden — who lost his 46-year-old son, Beau, to brain cancer last May — is now asking Americans to demand that scientists collaborate to overcome "cancer politics" and, thereby, find a cure.

His rallying cry came a month after he announced he wouldn't run for president.

Biden delivered his plea in Houston at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, whose Moon Shots program is aimed at finding an end to the massive killer.

The story says the vice president's found, after meeting with almost 200 oncologists, scientists and benefactors in the cancer community, an excess of "competition, territorialism and resistance to information-sharing."

The result, they apparently indicated to him, is that "researchers and their discoveries [have been left] cloistered in their own corners."

Biden plans not only to seek more funding but to encourage increased data-sharing.

It's been half a century since President Nixon declared war on cancer. Clearly, the war has not been won (despite survival rates having been improved, the American Cancer Society has predicted, according to the AP story, "1.7 million new cancer cases this year and nearly 600,000 deaths").

In a follow-up to his initial announcement, Biden softened his personal "moon shot" from facilitating a cure to a more realistic goal of doubling the rate of progress (meaning researchers would accomplish in five years what normally would take 10).

It's been unclear, however, exactly what "cure" Biden seeks — considering that cancer is hardly monolithic.

To learn more about that, and how researchers keep changing their minds and findings, check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed especially at male caregivers.

A 12-month-a-year job, not just October

Rethinking breast cancer awareness: Should our focus be on pink ribbons or a cure?

This month, October, is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Undeniably.

The media has been crammed, as it now is every year, with sympathetic tales — of survivors, of breakthroughs in research, of the medical world being soooo close to a miracle cure.

The original idea purportedly was to promote mammography. As for the pink ribbon component, it was an outgrowth of the yellow ones worn in 1979 in solidarity with American hostages in Iran — and, later on, the red ribbons that signified AIDS awareness.

And we’re all inundated with pink this and pink that, with corporations donating modest amounts to breast cancer research.

Yoga pants — only $34.98.

The now-global awareness campaign began in 1985 as a partnership between the American Cancer Society and the pharmaceutical division of what has become AstraZeneca.

The pink symbols flourished when the Susan G. Komen Foundation started handing them out in 1991 to runners who took part in its New York City breast cancer survivors’ race.

But some folks — and I, Woody Weingarten, the author of "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," count myself among them — believe the initial concept was hijacked by Big Business and became a profit-making distraction (some have labeled it “a red herring”) from what is most important: finding answers to what causes the disease.

And finding a cure.

Awareness must become a 24/7 job, 52 weeks a year, 12 months annually — every year until one is found.