7 ms·

Our life together was gone, and carrying on without her was exactly that, without her. I was reminded of our friend Liz’s insight after she lost her husban

by junto 13y ago

Our life together was gone, and carrying on without her was exactly that, without her. I was reminded of our friend Liz’s insight after she lost her husband to melanoma. She told me she had plenty of people to do things with, but nobody to do nothing with. A hard hitting article. I hope I never have to go through that with my partner, as the patient, nor the one left behind. I find it so sad that a medical breakthrough against cancer still seems so utterly distant. The pessimist in me fears that a cure for cancer is so remote because our capitalist society does not value finding a cure, rather treating it's woes as a vastly more profitable business. The optimist in me thinks that there are some scientists out there working for big pharma who value a reduction in suffering over profits.

JunkDNA 13y ago
Don't believe the standard trope that pharma prefers treatments vs. cures. I worked in oncology R&D in big pharma. Every single person there from management on down sincerely believed the drug candidates they were identifying and working on might be cures one day. The oncology drug development process in a strange way mirrors the experience cancer patients themselves (and I speak from experience-- lost my dad to pancreatic cancer when I was just starting out). You have these really good days, where you have data that says you might be on to something. That things are looking up. Maybe this time it will be different! One in a million chance! And you have those bad days, where it all seems to be falling apart. All the while through the ups and downs you know in the back of your mind that inevitably (well something like 98% of the time anyway), the data from the first clinical trials will come back, and the drug you thought was going to change the world isn't any better than anything else. Maybe if you get really lucky, the drug adds 3 months to patients' lives so it's not a total failure. So you pick yourself up after 5 - 8 years of work, and start all over at the beginning in the hopes that this time will be different. That is the reality of cancer drug development in a pharmaceutical company. There is no smoke-filled room where the managers say, "oh no, we can't pursue that it might cure people!". Even if people were so warped as to think that way, you can comfort yourself in knowing that biologists are so ignorant of the basics of cancer, they wouldn't know how to distinguish a cure for a mere treatment if they wanted. The reality is that cancer is biologically complex and ferociously difficult to cure. People seem to often use the "war" analogy (as in "the war on cancer"). If it's a war, we're still using pointed sticks and rocks and cancer has intercontinental ballistic missiles, special forces, and fighter jets. Every once in a while, someone stumbles onto a stronger piece of wood or a heavier rock.

by junto 13y ago

JunkDNA 13y ago

Don't believe the standard trope that pharma prefers treatments vs. cures. I worked in oncology R&D in big pharma. Every single person there from management on down sincerely believed the drug candidates they were identifying and working on might be cures one day. The oncology drug development process in a strange way mirrors the experience cancer patients themselves (and I speak from experience-- lost my dad to pancreatic cancer when I was just starting out). You have these really good days, where you have data that says you might be on to something. That things are looking up. Maybe this time it will be different! One in a million chance! And you have those bad days, where it all seems to be falling apart. All the while through the ups and downs you know in the back of your mind that inevitably (well something like 98% of the time anyway), the data from the first clinical trials will come back, and the drug you thought was going to change the world isn't any better than anything else. Maybe if you get really lucky, the drug adds 3 months to patients' lives so it's not a total failure. So you pick yourself up after 5 - 8 years of work, and start all over at the beginning in the hopes that this time will be different. That is the reality of cancer drug development in a pharmaceutical company. There is no smoke-filled room where the managers say, "oh no, we can't pursue that it might cure people!". Even if people were so warped as to think that way, you can comfort yourself in knowing that biologists are so ignorant of the basics of cancer, they wouldn't know how to distinguish a cure for a mere treatment if they wanted. The reality is that cancer is biologically complex and ferociously difficult to cure. People seem to often use the "war" analogy (as in "the war on cancer"). If it's a war, we're still using pointed sticks and rocks and cancer has intercontinental ballistic missiles, special forces, and fighter jets. Every once in a while, someone stumbles onto a stronger piece of wood or a heavier rock.