trding article: Based on this article seems PSA and Mammogram testing is questionable at best, seems its more of cash cow for companies performing the tests. And all of all the new cancer toxic drugs life was just extended 2.1 months, ( although that was a 10 year study from 2004 to 2014) maybe its increased a little in last 6 years but guessing not much.
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Pharmaceutical companies keep bringing new drugs to market. But one study found that 72 new anticancer drugs approved by the FDA between 2004 and 2014 prolonged survival for an average of 2.1 months. A 2017 report concluded that “most cancer drug approvals have not been shown to, or do not, improve clinically relevant end points,” including survival and quality of life. The authors worried that “the FDA may be approving many costly, toxic drugs that do not improve overall survival.”
CORRUPTION IN THE CANCER INDUSTRY
The aggressive, can-do American approach to health care isn’t working when it comes to medicine in general and cancer medicine in particular. The U.S. spends far more per capita on health care, including cancer care, than any other country, but higher expenditures have not led to longer lives. Quite the contrary. Europe, which spends much less on cancer care than the U.S., has lower cancer mortality rates, according to a 2015 study. So do countries such as Mexico, Italy and Brazil, according to Our World in Data.
The American approach fosters corruption. According to a 2019 essay in Stat News by oncologist Vinay Prasad, many cancer specialists accept payments from firms whose drugs they prescribe. This practice "leads us to celebrate marginal drugs as if they were game-changers," Prasad argues. "It leads experts to ignore or downplay flaws and deficits in cancer clinical trials. It keeps doctors silent about the crushing price of cancer medicines.”
Last year The New York Times and ProPublica reported that top officials at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center “repeatedly violated policies on financial conflicts of interest, fostering a culture in which profits appeared to take precedence over research and patient care.” Sloan Kettering’s chief medical officer, Jose Baselga, “failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in dozens of articles in medical journals.” Baselga left Sloan Kettering to become head of cancer research at the drug firm AstraZeneca.
The desire of oncologists to produce monetizable findings might also compromise the quality of their research. A 2012 examination of 53 “landmark” cancer studies found that only six could be reproduced. The so-called Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology has examined 14 more recent highly cited studies, and has confirmed only five without qualification.
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Pharmaceutical companies keep bringing new drugs to market. But one study found that 72 new anticancer drugs approved by the FDA between 2004 and 2014 prolonged survival for an average of 2.1 months. A 2017 report concluded that “most cancer drug approvals have not been shown to, or do not, improve clinically relevant end points,” including survival and quality of life. The authors worried that “the FDA may be approving many costly, toxic drugs that do not improve overall survival.”
CORRUPTION IN THE CANCER INDUSTRY
The aggressive, can-do American approach to health care isn’t working when it comes to medicine in general and cancer medicine in particular. The U.S. spends far more per capita on health care, including cancer care, than any other country, but higher expenditures have not led to longer lives. Quite the contrary. Europe, which spends much less on cancer care than the U.S., has lower cancer mortality rates, according to a 2015 study. So do countries such as Mexico, Italy and Brazil, according to Our World in Data.
The American approach fosters corruption. According to a 2019 essay in Stat News by oncologist Vinay Prasad, many cancer specialists accept payments from firms whose drugs they prescribe. This practice "leads us to celebrate marginal drugs as if they were game-changers," Prasad argues. "It leads experts to ignore or downplay flaws and deficits in cancer clinical trials. It keeps doctors silent about the crushing price of cancer medicines.”
Last year The New York Times and ProPublica reported that top officials at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center “repeatedly violated policies on financial conflicts of interest, fostering a culture in which profits appeared to take precedence over research and patient care.” Sloan Kettering’s chief medical officer, Jose Baselga, “failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in dozens of articles in medical journals.” Baselga left Sloan Kettering to become head of cancer research at the drug firm AstraZeneca.
The desire of oncologists to produce monetizable findings might also compromise the quality of their research. A 2012 examination of 53 “landmark” cancer studies found that only six could be reproduced. The so-called Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology has examined 14 more recent highly cited studies, and has confirmed only five without qualification.
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