Becky Stephens is more than willing to go to great lengths for a miracle. With a diagnosis of stage 4 colon cancer and chemo treatments that weren’t working, she was desperate for hope—and found it in a clinical trial.
So, the mother of three started making the often, four-hour round-trip trek from Santa Rosa to UCSF Medical Center every two weeks to participate. But the travel was tough. Aside from the cancer treatment leaving her exhausted, the long car trips were wearing on her.
By law, the Food and Drug Administration is required to determine whether a drug, device, biologic, or medical device is “safe and effective.” But the FDA determination does not control whether the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will pay for it. To satisfy CMS, medical products and services must be “reasonable and necessary,” meaning...
As a radiation oncologist, I am struck by how often the decisive variable in lung cancer is not the sophistication of our therapy, but the timing of our encounter with the disease. The American Cancer Society projects 618,120 cancer deaths in the United States in 2025, with lung cancer remaining as the single largest contributor,...
