The Discoverer of the Double-Helix Says Cancer Can Be Cured in the Near Future
The biggest problem: the FDA:
“The FDA has so many regulations,” Dr. [James] Watson says. “They don’t want you to try a new thing if there’s an old thing that might work. . . . So you take the old thing, but we know cancer changes over time and we would really like to get it whacked early, and not late. But the regulations are saying you can’t do these things until we give you a lot of s— drugs,” he snorts. “Shouldn’t this be the patient’s choice to say I would rather beat the odds with a total cure rather than just to know that I am going to have all my hair fall out and then after a year I’m dead? . . Why should [FDA commissioner] Margaret Hamburg hold things up? There’s the cynical answer it gives employment to lawyers.”
Yet another argument against “evidence-based” medicine.
Well said!
I like the tie in to evidence based medicine. It makes you realize what we could all be up against.
Good point. We could find a cure for cancer but it might not be available to anyone, because it would fail the “evidence based” test. This is similar to the prophylactic for AIDS that apparently has been around for some time, but which patients have no access to.
I’m becoming increasingly concerned about evidenced-based medicine and how it could be used as a rationing tool
This was a humor piece I hope. No one talks about a cure for cancer who knows anything about it.
Steve
We are going to soon discover that everything that is expensive is not going to be evidence-based.
Once again, the FDA comes to the rescue.
Ditto Greg’s comment.
Steve is right, having been treated for cancer my oncologists told me I was totally cured, this time.