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. 

Uterine cancer, and its deaths, increasing — particularly among Blacks, Hispanics and Asians

Uterine cancer is on the rise, especially among black women.

That's the conclusion of a study reported by Toni Caryn Rabin in editions of The New York Times a while back.

According to the story, "cancer of the uterus, also called endometrial cancer, is increasing so rapidly that it is expected to displace colorectal cancer by 2040 as the third most common cancer among women, and the fourth-leading cause of women’s cancer deaths."

The study, published in JAMA Oncology, showed that the "mortality rate has been increasing by almost 2 percent a year overall, with even sharper spikes among Asian, Hispanic and Black women," Rabin's article notes.

Uterine cancer, she continues, "was long believed to be less common among Black women. But newer studies have confirmed that it is not only more likely to strike Black women, but also more likely to be deadly."

According to a report from an expert panel convened by the American college of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, "Black women die of uterine cancer at twice the rate of White women," the story asserts.

One of the major problems blocking early detection is that "few women are aware that a change in menstrual bleeding, before or after menopause, is one of the main warning signs, along with pelvic pain and painful urination and intercourse," the article says.

Dr. Shannon Westin

Dr. Shannon Westin, a gynecologic oncologist at the university of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, is reported as saying that "when she first started caring for women with uterine cancer, there were about 39,000 new cases a year. Now, there are more than 65,000 — and she has been in practice only 15 years."

Those figures, she indicates, present "a clear indicator we should be ringing the alarm bells."

Dr. Carol Brown, a gynecologic oncologist, senior vice president and chief health equity officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, calls the surge in cases an epidemic. 

"The striking statistic is that right now…the number of women who will lose their lives to endometrial cancer in the U.S. is almost the same as those who will die of ovarian cancer, which is unbelievable to those of us in practice for the last 30 years," she's quoted as saying.

More information on studies with surprising results 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. 

Cancer patients are confronting widespread shortages of chemotherapy drugs, paper reports

The lives of cancer patients are being put at risk by record-high shortages of effective chemotherapy.

That's the main point of a story by Rene Ebersole in today's editions of The Washington Post.

Dr. Satyajit Kosuri

The story quotes Dr. Satyajit Kosuri, clinical director of the stem cell transplant and cellular therapy program at the University of Chicago, to the effect that the "majority are cheap, generic drugs that have been utilized in cancer medicine for decades." 

At the end of 2022, the story says, "there were 295 active medication shortages, ranging from antibiotics and anesthetics to cardiac medications and chemotherapy drugs." 

The increase was 30 percent above the previous year, according to a Homeland  Security and Governmental Affairs report.

Chemo drugs, "particularly those used to treat kids' cancers," Ebersole's piece asserts, "are among those medications experiencing some of the most prolonged shortages, says Dr. Yoram Unguru, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the Children's Hospital at Sinai and the core faculty, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics."

Unguru also is quoted as saying, "We don't have alternatives…This isn't strep throat or some other infection where if I don't have amoxicillin, I can swap it out for something that's probably if not as good, almost as good."

The drug shortage crisis stems in part from "low profit margins on generic drugs, an overreliance on foreign manufacturing, increasing quality risks, and brittle supply chains," the story contends. 

Dr. Yoram Unguru

Drugs in short supply, Unguru notes, are "older, generic injectable drugs that companies don't get a huge profit on." 

Because of that low profit factor, few companies make them.

"One recent meta-analysis found that a four-week treatment delay," the story continues, "can be associated with increased sickness or mortality for more than 40 percent of common cancers, including bladder, breast, colon, and lung cancer."

More information about Big Pharma and drugs 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.

Breast cancer spreads most often during sleep, unexpected findings from researchers indicates

Research findings have unearthed "potential implications for the timing of biopsy and treatment of metastasis-prone cancers."

That's one conclusion from the authors of a study published some time ago in the journal Nature that decided "the metastatic spread of breast cancer occurs predominantly during sleep."

The findings, according to a story by Megan Brooks online in Medscape Medical News, were "unexpected."

Nicola Aceto, PhD

Brooks quotes Nicola Aceto, PhD and professor of molecular oncology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology  (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland, as saying, "This has not been shown before [and] we were surprised, indeed."

Harrison Ball, a PhD candidate, and Sunitha Nagrath, PhD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, also are quoted, to the effect that "this finding is astounding."

In addition, Brooks' piece quotes Dr. Marlene Myers, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center in New York City, regarding clinical implications: "The most obvious is that the time of day [that] treatment is administered may influence efficacy."

She adds, however, that the benefits of treatment someone at night would need to be weighed against the downsides of interrupting a person's normal sleep-wake cycle. 

More information on research can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive a partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Major U.S. panel drops longstanding mammogram recommendations from 50 years of age to 40

"All women should start getting regular mammograms at age 40, an influential advisory panel said, in a stark revision of standard medical advice."

That paragraph in a recent online "breaking news" short by The New York Times led to a story by staffer Roni Caryn Rabin indicating that women shouldn't wait until 50, as had been advised since 2009.

The new advice, the piece says, "comes as breast cancer diagnoses rise among younger women and mortality rates among Black women remain persistently high."

Troubling trends in recent years, the article continues, "include an apparent increase in the number of cancer diagnosed in women under 50 and a failure to narrow the survival gap for younger Black women, who die of breast cancer at twice the rate of White women of the same age."

Dr. Carol Mangione

The story quotes Dr. Carol Mangione, immediate past chair of the I.S. Preventive Services Task Force, as saying that " we don't really know why there has been an increase in breast cancer among women in their 40s, but when more people in a certain age group are getting a condition, then screening of that group is going to be more impactful."

The new recommendations, the Times piece goes on, "covers more than 20 million women in the United States between the ages of 40 and 49."

Breast cancer has remained "the second mosts common cancer in women after skin cancer and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths, after lung cancer, among women in the United States," the story notes. 

One possible reason for the increase in younger women, it is speculated, might be postponement of childbearing — or not having children at all. At least that's the opinion of Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. "Having children before age 35," the Times story says, "reduces the risk of breast cancer, as does breast feeding."

More information about screening recommendations 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.

Docs push back on women who want flat chests rather than post-mastectomy reconstruction

Although some women prefer flat chests after a mastectomy, many surgeons fight them and push for reconstruction.

According to a story by Fran Kritz in The Washington Post some time ago, "several of those who sought the procedure say they got pushback — and outright denial — from their doctors when they brought it up."

Dr. Deanna Attai

The article focuses on Dr. Deanna Attai, an associate professor at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, who surveyed nearly 1,000 women who'd had a single or double mastectomy without reconstruction. Her study found that almost three-quarters said they were satisfied with the result.

Kritz's story quotes Roshni Rao, chief of breast surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, as having "seen more patients requesting to go flat after mastectomy, likely as they feel more power to make this decision."

Attai has noted that there's more awareness now that the process of reconstruction has risks: "Women who opt for reconstruction, whether a breast implant or their own tissue (called autologous reconstruction) could face multiple surgeries, post-surgery recovery, a 10 percent risk of infection which can get in the way of chemotherapy or radiation schedule, and, occasionally, implant recalls and removals."

Roughly 22 percent of the women in Attai's study, the Post story reports, "said a flat closure option was either not initially offer by their surgeon, or was not supported by the surgeon, or the surgeon intentionally left additional skin in case he patient changed her mind. That extra skin would require further surgery if the woman did not change her mind about the flat closure."

More information about the choice between flat-chestedness and reconstruction 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.

Actor Sam Neil must take chemotherapy rest of life to ward off recurrence of lymphoma

After fighting it for months, actor Sam Neill, star of Jurassic Park movie franchise, has finally revealed that he has been diagnosed with blood cancer.

Sam Neill

According to a recent story by Lee Moran on the HuffPost website, Neill says he's being treated but is in remission. There's now "no cancer in my body," he's quoted as saying. 

He will, however, need chemotherapy treatment each month for the rest of his life, he admitted to the Guardian in an interview.

Moran's piece says the 75-year-old was diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma "after experiencing swollen glands while promoting Jurassic World Dominion last year."

His revelations most likely came because his memoir — Did I Ever Tell You This? — was just released.. Writing it, the HuffPost story quotes him, "was a lifesaver" that gave him "a reason to live."'

Neill is back to work, with his next television appearance scheduled for Apples Never Fail, a limited upcoming Peacock series co-starring Annette Bening.

More information about treatments and 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.

Left Edge Theatre's 'Pass Over' elicits laughs, shock as it depicts Black fears, hopes

Here's my latest theatre review:

https://localnewsmatters.org/2023/05/03/review-left-edge-theatres-pass-over-elicits-laughs-shock-as-it-depicts-black-fears-hopes/