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My understanding is that immunotherapy has been shown to work great for cancers without solid tumors and results have been disappointing with solid tumors. It i
by DFHippie 7y ago
My understanding is that immunotherapy has been shown to work great for cancers without solid tumors and results have been disappointing with solid tumors. It isn't that it's marching steadily forward and will eventually have been shown successfully everywhere.
I think people running down John Horgan's editorial keep citing successes -- multiple myeloma! cured! -- but aren't addressing his overarching argument, which, as I understand it, is that people are being sold false hope in the majority of cases -- familiar cancers like breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, colo-rectal cancer -- which has the negative consequences of impoverishing them and increasing their suffering for negligible benefit.
To be clear, I don't have any horse in this race aside from insurance bills.
- mrosett 7y agoMost of the indications for immunotherapy are cancers with solid tumors. This source [0] is a bit dated (2017) but it contains a chart showing which cancers had an indication for immunotherapy at the time, and they're almost all solid tumors. The initial approvals for the big immunotherapy drugs were for melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer. [0] https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/08/immunotherapy-cancer-breakthrough/ https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/08/immunotherapy-cancer-bre...
- nonbel 7y ago2017 is a bit dated?
- mrosett 7y agoThe first immunotherapy was approved in March 2011. An article from 2017 listing diseases with approved immunotherapies misses fully 1/3 of the years (3 out of 9) in which immunotherapies have been approved.
- nonbel 7y agoMakes some sense, but that got me wondering if medical guidelines are going to start getting updates every few weeks like web browsers do.