Is the Reporting of Cancer Research Usually (or even mostly) Accurate?

The cancer information site, Cancer.Net has published information to help us everyday health care consumers to judge the sometimes spectacular sounding medical news. Medical news changes day by day and week by week. If you see terms like "breakthrough" or "life changing drug is discovered,"--be skeptical. The article and claims may be questioned or discredited a week or two from now. It is difficult to know what to believe and whether or not you should do something to take advantage of the "new" information.

How can you tell if medical news is accurate? That is the question. There are hundreds of news sources--newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts, and on and on. They very often provide spectacular, miraculous, and conflicting "facts and figures." Many of us are eager to believe that a "miracle" can happen. But before you fly off to a foreign country for treatment or spend thousands of dollars out of your own pocket, ask some questions and do your homework. 

Here are a few things you can ask or consider or do...

1   First of all, check with your doctor and medical team.
2   Find a link to the actual research study site (if there is one).
3   Was the research conducted on animals, humans, or by computer simulation?
4   Was the research reported by the New England Journal of Medicine or Journal of the American Medical Association or the National Cancer Institute? If so, it is more likely to be accurate.
5   Were the results based on extensive human Clinical Trials?
6   Have you considered participating in clinical trials to help get the best research results?
7   Check for FDA approval or the status of the approval process.
8   Does the article report information about risk? There is always risk.
9   Is there concrete evidence of an improved survival benefit?
10  Who stands to get rich if the treatment becomes widely available?
11  Does the research and reporting promise a "cure?" 
12  Does the reporting claim the treatment will help everybody with cancer? One size fits all is a highly unlikely outcome.
13  What specific cancer conditions reportedly will be affected by the treatment?
14  Is the reporting based  mostly on somebody's "Expert Opinion?" Beware.
15  Even compelling research evidence can take years before treatments become available to patients.

Be skeptical, do your homework, and look into available clinical trials in your areas of need and interest. Every FDA approved treatment started as a clinical trial. And many  clinical trials that seemed promising never proved effective enough to get FDA approval.




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To put a smile on your face see Larry's latest cartoon.
To learn more about clinical trials, take a look at our book.

(c) 2012 Tom Beer and Larry Axmaker

Enzalutamide shown to extend survival in prostate cancer

A video summary of my presentation at GU Cancers Symposium in San Francisco in the last days of January 2014.



 From http://ecancer.org.  To go the ecancer site, click here

To put a smile on your face see Larry's latest cartoon.
To learn more about clinical trials, take a look at our book.

(c) 2012 Tom Beer and Larry Axmaker

Can the immune system remember?

The study we discuss here is not "ready for prime time" but it does report some exciting findings that suggest that immunologic therapy for cancer can produce long term immune memory



To put a smile on your face see Larry's latest cartoon.
To learn more about clinical trials, take a look at our book.

(c) 2012 Tom Beer and Larry Axmaker

Clinical Trials—a brief history

Over the past few decades clinical trials have been in the news quite frequently. Every time an important new drug has been approved or disapproved you hear about it on TV, read about it on the Internet, or hear about it from your medical team.

But did you know that the first successful clinical trial we know about occurred more than 250 years ago? If you have read our book, Cancer Clinical Trials, of course you do but if you haven’t you may find this interesting.

For hundreds of years, sailing ships explored the world on longer and longer voyages (think Columbus, Cook, Magellan, etc.). While on these long voyages, many sailors became ill with scurvy—a disease that causes severe joint pain, loss of teeth, skin lesions, bleeding ulcers, and even death. Nobody knew for sure what caused this.

In the 1740s a Scottish doctor named James Lind was hired as a ship’s doctor and while on a long voyage observed the devastating effects of scurvy. He believed it was diet-based and devised a plan to test his idea. His hypothesis was that scurvy was diet based and lemons and lemon juice might cure it. The experiment was to give various groups of sailors with scurvy different dietary treatments including lemon juice. After a few weeks the sailors taking lemon juice were cured and the other groups were not. The result was that Dr. Lind had shown scientifically that lemon juice would cure scurvy. We now know that scurvy is caused by a vitamin C deficiency and lemons and limes can prevent or cure it.

It took a long time for Lind’s discovery to be widely accepted, but eventually and to this day citrus fruits and juice are available on nearly all voyages and scurvy is no longer the scourge of the seas.

This is the same process (hypothesis, experiment, result) used to conduct clinical trials today—with a little more sophistication, of course. We owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Lind.

To put a smile on your face see Larry's latest cartoon.
To learn more about clinical trials, take a look at our book.

(c) 2012 Tom Beer and Larry Axmaker

Taking stock - how are we doing on the cancer clinical trials blog

Recently, we got a nice review from the Journal of Clinical Research Best Practices and got selected for their "Bookshelf."  It's not the first nice review, but the first one in a little while after the initial reviews that come at the time of publication. Seeing this review got me thinking that it might be a good time to take stock of how we are doing.   In short, pretty well.  Our blog has been up and running since the beginning of the year and our book was published in May.  The book has been doing well with total sales approaching 10,000 copies.  Several partners have purchased the book in quantity to distribute to cancer patients as an educational resource.  In addition to that, regular folks are buying the books at bookstores at a good clip.  Our hope for the book was not to necessarily sell a lot of copies right away, but to establish the book as the go to resource for folks interested in clinical trials, a resource that will be an enduring one for years to come.  Time will tell, but we are off to a good start.

The blog recently crossed 20,000 page views.  A blip when compared to the giants, but a pretty good showing for us.  The most popular part of the blog...by a mile...Larry's cartoons.

Recently we launched a new effort.  It's a little ways away from being realized, but we are working on a pediatric version of our book.  It won't really be a kids book, but more a book for parents of kids with cancer.  Clinical trials are a part of cancer care for nearly 2/3 of kids diagnosed with the disease.  The principles are similar, but many things are a little different.  Not a lot of kids insured by Medicare, for example...  We are fortunate to have recruited Dr. Stacy Nicholson, Physician-in-chief at the Doernbecher Childrens' Hospital to help us refashion our book for the world of pediatric oncology.
So thank you for visiting our blog, considering our book and being a part of our community, focused on sharing knowledge about cancer clinical trials.


To put a smile on your face see Larry's latest cartoon.
To learn more about clinical trials, take a look at our book.
(c) 2012 Tom Beer and Larry Axmaker

What are cancer clinical trials about: a webinar for you

Today, Larry and I were joined by Evan Denhart in presenting a webinar about clinical trials.  In the two part discussion we talked about clinical trials, what they are, how they work, and what it is like to participate.  Then we discussed the AFFINITY study, a newly launched phase III clinical trial for advanced prostate cancer.  We took questions and had a great time.  See and hear it all here.  This presentation takes a while, so you can preview it quickly, but you will need to set aside a bit of time to get the most out of it.  Hope you enjoy it.

To put a smile on your face see Larry's latest cartoon.
To learn more about clinical trials, take a look at our book.

(c) 2012 Tom Beer and Larry Axmaker