This is the transcript of a radio interview with Mario Szenol, an associate professor of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Centre. During the interview, Dr. Sznol talks about the process of drug development and clinical trials. He describes the drug development process as being long, saying 7 to 10 years are requiered for a successful drug to become available. The doctor summarises the implications of every phase of the process. He also states that only 10% of the drugs that enter the clinical trials in cancer will eventually get approval by the Food and Drug Administration.…
In this course’s reading, I got the chance to be surrounded by discoveries that I hope one day will be true. Reading “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” by Octavia Butler (spring 1991), showed me that a cure for cancer will be found. But, it also showed me that this cure, the one that helps cancer patients get their lives back, will cause their children fatal problems, problems that will set a bomb in their heads that keeps on…
“It is our best shot,” said Dr. Flaherty who was leading the research in melanoma cancer at the University of Pennsylvania (Harmon “A Roller Coaster Chase for a Cure” 1). Targeted cancer therapy and personalized medicine are a revolutionary approach in drug discovery to treat a disease that affects vast population of the human race. After years of toil and labor the researchers were able to formulate a drug that was successful in shrinking the tumors in the body of the patients that were suffering from the melanoma, one of the most dangerous forms of cancer. The drug PLX4032 is designed to bind to the B-RAF protein in the mutated gene to block the growth of cancerous cells(Harmon “A Roller Coaster Chase for a Cure” 1-2). The attack…
Over the past twenty years, the Jimmy V foundation has raised more than $100 million. This speech is still relevant today because everyone knows someone who has suffered from this disease. “In the early recognition and treatment of cancer lies the hope of cure.” This is the motto of the American Society for the Control of Cancer, the national association composed of physicians and laymen whose object is the education of the public regarding the nature and treatment of this disease (Taussig). As much money as this country spends on war and technology, the fact there is still no cure for this disease baffles me.…
1957 Thalidomide disaster revolutionised the drug industry. As an over-the-counter medicine, Thalidomide has been sold in 46 countries, starting with Germany, and has soon become popular among the sedatives available at the time. Moreover, it was discovered to lessen morning sickness which led to doctors recommending it to pregnant patients. Four years later, in 1961, the drug was associated with severe side affects. Babies were born with phocomelia, a condition involving the malformation or absence of the limbs.…
If researchers could find a way to cure cancer, it could save a lot of lives. Folkman found two cancer inhibitors, angiostatin and endostatin, that he thinks might be a way to cure cancer. Five laboratories have also isolated their own angiogenesis inhibitors. How tumors start angiogenesis is what motivates cancer specialists to conduct cancer research.…
(2013) explained that in order for a life event to be considered striking, it should have elicited acute anxiety disorder in the person. The physiological consequences of this disorder are a malfunctioning on the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis, which provokes a rise on cortisol levels and reduction of the natural ability of the body to prevent the growth of tumors (Lin et al., 2013). On the other hand, Chapter 26 also explains why the myth of “A Positive Attitude Can Stave off Cancer” has become apparently so popular, and the main reason has been self-help books from people that have survived cancer (Lilienfeld et al., 2009). For instance, the book of Louis Hay, who wrote You Can Heal Your Life. In Chapter 26, assumes that authors that who writes this kind of inspirational books promotes rejection of conventional medicine, and claims that only changing attitude will stave off cancer, but this is not completely accurate.…
Within the middle of the book, Livingston begins to clarify, that improvisation was an important day-to-day activity in the ward. The doctors and nurses were described to deal with many different cancer cases. Livingston explains that some patients would enter the ward with just cancer, other with HIV and cancer and some with TB and cancer, making each and every case different. For patients that have a virus and cancer, they face complicated treatment options that could also lower their chances of a possible cure (44). The author also describes how she witnessed the doctors improvising a mix of chemo by hand because the pharmacy that supplies their chemo did not deliver it.…
Has it ever crossed your mind that the Food and Drug Administration are hiding the cure for cancer? Even better, keeping it a secret from millions of people. In this essay it is going to talk about the reasons why they are keeping the cure hidden. One reason why the FDA is keeping it a secret is because they do not want to give out the way that they can cure cancer. Also, why would they give the cure out when they make billions of money?…
She doesn’t want to miss out on things in life, such as playing hockey, that she wouldn’t normally have to if she wasn’t born for the sole purpose of keeping her sister alive. However, if I was in Anna’s situation I would have donated everything I could to my sister to keep her alive. The difference is that Anna had been donating since the day she was born, and I’ve never had to donate anything or give anything up because of it. Since we find out in the end that Anna wanted to donate and that Kate wanted her to fight against it so she could die, I found that I differed from Anna’s character in this aspect of the book. I wouldn’t have listened to my sister and I would have tried even harder to keep her alive.…
Optimistic for Cancer Cancer affects society more than any other disease. Continually, with a wide range of types, a not-so-long list of treatment options, and no definite cure, cancer embodies evil. If society embraces this evil as it is, no improvements will occur. Nonetheless, opening the eyes of humanity to other options than what appears on the surface is a large factor in future cancer success rates. Optimism is the cause of an increase of successful cancer treatments because of several causal chain arguments.…
The scientists believe that they can use this information to fight cancer. When cancer cells appear, these repairing mechanisms repair the cancer cells, too. If they create something that can stop the repairing mechanisms from fixing cancer cells, the cells will eventually die and the person’s health will improve. The scientists stated, “The academy highlighted one such drug that's already on the market: olaparib, which is used to fight ovarian cancer.” Still they must find other types of medicines that will be better fit…
Cancer has many forms of treatment, but the two that are known to most are chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Chemotherapy is the use of drugs like cytotoxic and others, where as radiation therapy is the use of x-rays or other similar forms of radiation to cure cancer. Arguments can and more than likely always arise that one form of the two treatments is more beneficial and effective than the other. Considering this, the type of treatment that may be used can differ for each type of cancer, just depending on which one is more useful for the particular illness. The two treatment may differ in a few ways but the biggest one can be the side effects of each one.…
Six months ago, both of my grandparents were diagnosed with cancer. I was given the opportunity to take my grandparents to chemotherapy at the cancer center. I got to witness how the doctors and pharmacists worked in collaboration to help ensure my grandparents’ success in overcoming this dreadful disease. As we waited to begin chemotherapy, I was able to observe the pharmacist prepare the chemotherapy treatment under the hood for each individual patient. I also got to witness how the…
Even before we watched this movie in class, I’ve already heard about this story through my aunt’s friend, who is a breast cancer survivor. In the course of her treatment, she was reading the book version of this and shared that she learned a lot from this book regarding her illness and all the obstacles one has to face in order for a treatment to be approved. The movie is basically about a UCLA oncologist and researcher Dr. Dennis Slamon, creator of the promising breast cancer drug Herceptin. According to Dr. Slamon, this drug could effectively switch off cancer cells for women with tumors of the Her-2+ (Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2-positive) without radiation treatment. In 1998, the FDA finally approved the use of Herceptin to…