Op-ed in N.Y. Times charges TV ads pushing cancer drug are 'misleading and exploitive."

Are cancer drugs on television misleading?

In a word, yes.

A recent op-ed piece in The New York Times by Matt Jablow, a public relations director for an insurance company, underscored that answer.

Ronna and Matt Jaslow
in Tuscany, where
she was diagnosed
with lung cancer.

Jablow's wife, Ronna, was found to have lung cancer in August 2013. The diagnosis, made when they were vacationing in Tuscany, was later confirmed at Johns Hopkins Hospital near where the Jaslow family lived in Maryland.

Over the next two years, she was treated with chemotherapy for the Stage 4 disease and, when it metastasized to her brain, radiation.

She also took part in clinical trials for Opdivo, an experimental immunology drug made by Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Opdivo purportedly helped a person's immune system identify and attack cancer cells.

It didn't work for Jablow's wife, however.

She died in September 2015.

Jablow was doing as well as could be expected, according to his article, until he saw a 90-second TV ad for Opdivo "that began with soaring music and shots of older people in warm sunlight, gazing upward at a building on which the words 'A chance to live longer' were superimposed. The voice-over said, 'Opdivo significantly increased the chance of living longer versus chemotherapy.'"

It would be "incredibly uplifting," he continued, "if it weren't so utterly misleading and exploitive."

To date, Jablow contends, "only about one in five patients with Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer has seen any measurable response to Opdivo; and, in those patients who do respond, the median increase in life expectancy is only about three months compared with standard chemotherapy."

The hype, says Jablow, "far exceeds the reality."

So "it is shameful," he contends, "for Bristol-Myers Squibb to prey upon the fears and waning hopes of terminal cancer patients, and irresponsible of the Food and Drug Administration to let it."

Jablow notes that only the United States and New Zealand allow direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads, and that the American Medical Association has argued that they should be banned.

Information about cancer drugs, clinical trials and research can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Total remissions stem from patients' T-cells

'Serial killers' on the loose — how cell therapy is now being used to attack blood cancer

An evolving technique called cell therapy can make cancer disappear.

Total remissions already have occurred in "some patients who were out of treatment options," according to a recent story by Andrew Pollack in The New York Times that I just found on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser website.

How does the technique work?

Pollack's piece reports that a "patient's T-cells, the solders of the immune system, are extracted from the patient's blood, then genetically engineered to recognize and destroy cancer." 

And then "the redesigned cells are multiplied in the laboratory, and millions or billions of them are put back into the patient's bloodstream, set loose like a vast army of tumor assassins."

Dr. Carl H. June

Dr. Carl H. June of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the top three researchers studying cell therapy, calls the cells "serial killers." 

He also is quoted as saying the individualized technique "works better than nature made it."

One killer cell apparently can destroy up to 100,000 cancer cells.

Only hundreds — not thousands — of patients have been treated with cell therapy so far, however, mainly because "it works only for certain types of blood cancers, not common malignancies like breast and lung cancer," Pollack writes.

Another problem is potentially lethal brain-swelling as a side effect.

Details about immunology and other experimental techniques can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Shannen Doherty's breast cancer metastasizes

TV actress' post-mastectomy treatments: chemotherapy, radiation, strong marriage

Shannen Doherty

.

Shannen Doherty's breast cancer has metastasized.

To her lymph notes and perhaps elsewhere.

Exactly what that means regarding treatments is still unclear, however.

US magazine this week reported that Doherty gave an interview to "Entertainment Tonight" in which she finally admitted having had a mastectomy in May, and that she's using an expander.

The 45-year-old actress, who's already undergoing chemotherapy (eight sessions have been planned), has now added radiation to her regimen.

Doherty, who during a four-year stint on "Beverly Hills 90210" gained fame as someone difficult to work with, told "ET" that "living without a breast is manageable. It's the worry of your future and how your future is going to affect the people that you love."

She also said that "the unknown is always the scariest part. Is the chemo going to work? Is the radiation going to work? You know, am I going to have to go through this again, or am I going to get secondary cancer?"

Last month she posted six black-and-white photos on Instagram showing her lopping off her hair, preceded by another picture with this caption: #cancersucks.

She said at the time that she'd probably be unable to have children because of the cancer treatments.

During this week's interview, she reported that "it was traumatic and horrible" being fitted for a new bra. "I broke down crying in the dressing room and ran out, and then sat in the car crying."

Her breast cancer diagnosis originally was made in February 2015.

On Tuesday, her photographer husband, Kurt Iswarienko, shared an Instagram shot of the couple flipping the bird to cancer. Doherty was wearing a bright pink wig.

She commented that he's been with her through all the chemo treatments so far, and that her cancer has "made my marriage a thousand times stronger."

Insights into mastectomies and other treatments can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

N.Y. Times story tells of 'tumors melting away'

Experimental immunotherapies now sometimes replace chemo as a treatment for cancers

Immunotherapy.

Long word. Comparatively short history.

But one suddenly filled with lots of promise about fighting cancer.

A recent story by Denise Grady in The New York Times deals with how a patient's own immune cells may now help — even when standard treatments fail.

The experimental treatment, according to the article, has resulted in "remarkable stories of tumors melting away and terminal illnesses going into remissions that last years."

Those stories, Grady writes, are backed "by solid data [and] have led to an explosion of interest and billions of dollars of investments…Pharmaceutical companies, philanthropists and the federal government's 'cancer moonshot' program are pouring money into developing treatments."

The explosion, the story continues, "has brought new optimism to cancer doctors — a sense they they have begun tapping into a force of nature, the medical equivalent of splitting the atom."

Dr. Jedd Wolchok

The Times quotes Dr. Jedd Wolchok, chief of melanoma and immunotherapeutics services at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, as saying, "This is a fundamental change in the way that we think about cancer therapy."

Immunotherapy — which "tries to help the immune system recognize cancer as a threat, and attack it" — now sometimes replaces chemotherapy, which attacks cancer cells more directly.

Two new techniques stand out.

The first "creates a new, individualized treatment for each patient by removing some of the person's immune cells, altering them genetically to kill cancer and then infusing them back into the bloodstream."

The second involves mass-produced drugs (called checkpoint inhibitors) "that do not have to be tailored to each patient. [They block] a mechanism — called a checkpoint — that cancer uses to shut down the immune system."

Those drugs are not cheap — they cost about $150,000 a year.

And that's not the biggest downside.

Grady notes that "immunotherapy has worked in only a minority of patients, and researchers are struggling to find out why."

Immunotherapy and other treatment innovations are addressed in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Mastectomy may be in the offing for 45-year-old

Actress Shannen Doherty preempts breast cancer hair loss by shaving her head

Shannen Doherty, with pre-cancer
treatments haircut in process.

Suddenly, actress Shannen Doherty is bald.

Temporarily, at least.

She's shaved her head while fighting breast cancer, according to a recent Associated Press story in the Washington Times.

The 45-year-old Doherty posted six black-and-white photos on Instagram that showed her lopping off her locks, preceded by another picture with a caption carrying the phrase #cancersucks.

Her cancer initially was disclosed in a lawsuit filed last year against her ex-business managers.

It alleged that they caused her health to deteriorate while they mismanaged her money. She charged in the suit that her cancer went undetected because she put off going to a doctor when they let her insurance lapse.

Doherty gained fame in a four-year stint as Brenda Walsh on "Beverly Hills 90210" — but even greater notoriety as being someone extremely difficult to work with.

The actress — who maintains she'll probably be unable to have children because of her cancer treatments — has signed to do a television series based on the 1995 Kevin Smith movie, "Mallrats."

She's also said she's prepared to have a mastectomy if other treatments fail.

You can learn about the psychological damage of hair loss in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

DNA mutations plus sun damage equals trouble

Genes linked to red hair and pale skin increase your risk of melanoma, a new study says

News reports, I've found, sometimes merely confirm what conventional and folk wisdom have known forever.

Case in point — the recent UPI story (based on one in HealthDay News) that carried the headline "Genes tied to red hair, pale skin greatly raise melanoma risk."

I could have told you that. 

Because I've been living for a long time with a woman with red hair and pale skin and freckles.

Nancy Fox — and her long red hair.

My wife, Nancy Fox, successfully had a melanoma on her arm removed — after she'd conquered breast cancer. And neither of us can count how many pre-cancerous growths she's had dermatologists cut out, burn off or otherwise remove.

But what I hadn't realize was that, at least according to the story, having the troublesome gene mutation — known as MC1R— "is roughly equivalent to the person spending an extra 21 years in the sun."

The British study, which examined more than 400 people and whose findings were published in Nature Communications, determined that "there were 42 percent more mutations linked to sun damage in the tumors of those carrying the red hair gene variant than in those without that DNA."

It showed, moreover, that "skin cancer isn't just about being more vulnerable to the sun's harmful UV rays. Carrying the MC1R gene variant raises the number of mutations triggered by sun exposure, the researchers explained, but it also raises the level of non-sun-linked mutations within tumors."

I, not incidentally, based my VitalityPress book, "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," which is aimed at male caregivers, on my wife's courage in battling her cancers. 

Unfortunately, what she's still faced with — constantly — is having doctors take off pre-cancerous growths from her face, arms and other body parts. All because she has red hair and pale skin and didn't protect herself from the sun when she was young.

Risks of side effects and over-treatment cited

Estrogen-suppressing drug may lower cancer patients' odds of recurrence, new study reveals

A new study says letrozole, an estrogen-suppressing drug, can benefit breast cancer patients.

If post-menopausal women with early-stage breast cancer take the aromatase inhibitor for 10 years instead of five, according to a recent story by Andrew Pollack in The New York Times, the chances of their cancer returning is lowered by 34 percent.

And their odds of developing a new case of cancer in the other breast dropped similarly.

The study — which involved 1,900 post-menopausal women in the United States and Canada — was presented to the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting, and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Skeptics, however, said the extra five years boosted "the risk of side effects like bone loss and joint and muscle pain."

Dr. Eric Winer

Dr. Eric Winer, director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston's breast cancer program and an author of the study, insisted the added five years is "an option but not the standard," and specifically noted that the new approach isn't for every woman.

"You have to be careful not to over-treat everyone," The Times quoted him as warning.

But, he told the newspaper, it's "most important to prevent recurrence outside the breast because that is what kills people."

Typically, the article said, women now take either tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor "to block or suppress estrogen in hopes of keeping the cancer from returning."

Guidelines from the oncology society suggest that women take tamoxifen for 10 years "because studies have show this prevents cancer recurrence and improves survival."

But woman also may take tamoxifen for five years and follow with an aromatase inhibitor for another five.

The majority of post-menopausal women currently start on the latter.

To learn about these or other cancer drugs, check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

15,000 results from Silicon Valley startup studied

Will new liquid biopsies replace painful, risky, invasive tumor tests? Perhaps, research says

Are painful, risky biopsies on the way out?

Maybe.

According to a recent story by Andrew Pollack in The New York Times, a new test known as a liquid biopsy can detect cancer mutations — with results that apparently agree, generally, "with those of an invasive tumor biopsy."

Conventional biopsies mean a needle or surgery extracts a piece of a tumor. But both those methods can lead to complications.

The liquid biopsies, the Times piece says, "take advantage of the fact that DNA fragments from tumors can be found in tiny amounts in the blood of patients with cancer."

Dr. Philip C. Mack

The story quotes researcher Philip C. Mack, Ph.D. director of molecular pharmacology at the U.C. Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, who presented his result at the annual meeting of 
the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The findings come from a study that looked at the results of more than 15,000 liquid biopsies performed by Guardant Health, a Silicon Valley startup, on people with breast, lung, colorectal and other cancers.

So far, the liquid test only monitors disease progression or detects the genetic mutations "that could suggest which drug should be used," according to The Times, and is not yet used to diagnose cancer.

And it isn't cheap — with a list price of $5,800.

Dozens of companies, The Times notes, "are now developing or offering liquid biopsies, and tissue biopsy companies are trying to defend their turf."

Cancer research is extensive. To learn more about it, check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.