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> I'm also not sure how much they're supposed to say—I don't see the NDAs or other docs they sign with drug companies. That said, if they see tumors shrink in a

by timr 3y ago

> I'm also not sure how much they're supposed to say—I don't see the NDAs or other docs they sign with drug companies. That said, if they see tumors shrink in at least some patients, that's pretty good. I mean, that's all they have to go on, so it's all they can say. But it's a long way from any sort of proof, and they really should only be saying "we don't know, and you're taking part in an experiment to find out". What you're saying about oncologists sounds quite plausible to me...there are sadly a lot of doctors who don't understand science, and it's sort of a fundamental feature of medicine that the people involved want very badly to believe in whatever they're doing. This can/does lead to people making bold claims on thin evidence. That said, I do hope it works out for you, and I wish you the best. It's a selfless thing to take part in a clinical trial, and even more so when the stakes are so high. Edit: regarding the pembro+lenvatinib trial article you linked (LEAP), it's not the only one that showed similar results (PFS benefit, but no OS). The CLEAR trial was similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsN0mskqUyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsN0mskqUyU Edit 2: also, I want to add that nothing I said above was meant to imply that they should hide data, just that they should make it clear what the odds are in a phase 1 trial situation.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
>But it's a long way from any sort of proof, and they really should only be saying "we don't know, and you're taking part in an experiment to find out". I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what doctors are communicating. Of course they can communicate medical consensus, but they can also communicate personal opinion, as fallable as it may be. It is a human interaction.
shiroiushi 3y ago
>there are sadly a lot of doctors who don't understand science This is probably partly due to the history of medicine. It's not like engineering, which is fundamentally the practice of applied science. Medicine came from a very different path, basically like voodoo or witchcraft, and has been struggling to become more scientific. Many fields of medicine are fundamentally unscientific, such as chiropractic. Also, doctors (mostly) aren't scientists or researchers at all: they're basically what non-medical engineers and scientists would consider "technicians". They use tools and knowledge the scientists and engineers have found or made, and apply them to individual problems (i.e. patients). Of course, it doesn't help at all that the systems doctors work on (human bodies) are ridiculously complex, and themselves not at all a product of engineering. And on top of that, every human is somewhat different, so things that work on one don't work on others. Personally, I think the entire field of western medicine, though it's still better than the ridiculously unscientific forms of traditional medicine it competes with, needs some work to improve its scientific foundations.

by timr 3y ago

s1artibartfast 3y ago

>But it's a long way from any sort of proof, and they really should only be saying "we don't know, and you're taking part in an experiment to find out". I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what doctors are communicating. Of course they can communicate medical consensus, but they can also communicate personal opinion, as fallable as it may be. It is a human interaction.

shiroiushi 3y ago

>there are sadly a lot of doctors who don't understand science This is probably partly due to the history of medicine. It's not like engineering, which is fundamentally the practice of applied science. Medicine came from a very different path, basically like voodoo or witchcraft, and has been struggling to become more scientific. Many fields of medicine are fundamentally unscientific, such as chiropractic. Also, doctors (mostly) aren't scientists or researchers at all: they're basically what non-medical engineers and scientists would consider "technicians". They use tools and knowledge the scientists and engineers have found or made, and apply them to individual problems (i.e. patients). Of course, it doesn't help at all that the systems doctors work on (human bodies) are ridiculously complex, and themselves not at all a product of engineering. And on top of that, every human is somewhat different, so things that work on one don't work on others. Personally, I think the entire field of western medicine, though it's still better than the ridiculously unscientific forms of traditional medicine it competes with, needs some work to improve its scientific foundations.