New Directions
Dear Readers, Your author is en route to Chicago to attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. It’s the first time in years I’ll be there, and I’m looking forward to ...
Dr. Elaine Schattner's notes on becoming educated as a patient
Dear Readers, Your author is en route to Chicago to attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. It’s the first time in years I’ll be there, and I’m looking forward to ...
The harsh reality is that people who have had cancer treatment are sometimes perceived as a burden on a working group
As for 10 months of PFS, that’s valuable. Imagine that you’re 55 years old and living with metastatic breast cancer. A drug that is likely to delay, by most of 2 years, your tumor’s expansion into the lungs …A concern I have is that this study wasn’t blinded,
This new JAMA article reviews the literature. At a glance, it may add to the growing perception among journalists, primary care physicians and others – including ordinary women – that mammography’s effectiveness has been, again, disproved.
What I choose to remember about Shirley Temple is that she lived for 41 years after having a mastectomy for breast cancer. In 1972 she spoke openly about her medical condition, and encouraged other women to seek medical care if they noticed a lump, and not to be afraid of the disease. She made it easier for us, today, to talk about breast cancer treatment and options.
While therapy has improved quite a bit since 1985, the greatest benefit derives from most women avoiding the need for life-long treatment by having small tumors found and removed before they’ve spread.
The new Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance includes a spectrum of agencies, young and old, working together. The goal is to promote knowledge and research about breast cancer metastases – to develop more effective, less toxic treatments, and to improve the lives of people living with Stage 4 disease.
What goes unaddressed by the justices is the patentability of cDNA based on common genetic variants in cancer. Those are “naturally occurring” mutations, inasmuch as they arise in humans….And the Supremes need to know about biology.
If I could pick a field for future investigation that might lead to insight on cancer’s causes and, ultimately, reduce the cancer burden 30 and 50 years from now, I might choose the tiny, under-funded area of environmental oncology
The problem with Tamoxifen is that it has anti-estrogen effects that many young (and older) women consider undesirable. Already our breasts have been cut. Feeling “feminine” is not trivial.