This week’s oncology headlines run the gamut—from a discussion on the long-term consequences of 9/11 on lung cancer incidence, to the promise—and limits—of cutting edge mRNA science, to major institutional leadership changes, and even the intersection of cancer and war.
This episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Youtube.
In this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher with The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, managing editor, discuss the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in relation to toxic exposure and cancer risk. The surprising finding is that the expected increase in lung cancer has not emerged in the way researchers might have anticipated. This may be due in part to a smoking cessation program for first responders spearheaded by the World Trade Center Health Program. The program’s medical director, Michael Crane, appeared on a recent episode of the Cancer History Project Podcast.
Paul and Jacqeulyn also discuss the potentially game changing topline data that has been announced by Moderna/Merck personalized mRNA melanoma vaccine. The results, if the data holds up, will mark a milestone for the field: the first positive phase III result for an individualized neoantigen therapy and, according to the companies, the first-ever phase III success for an mRNA cancer therapy.
“I think everybody who’s really gung-ho and heart-eyes, lovestruck with the idea of precision medicine, I think that this is just really, really exciting,” Jacquelyn said.
This podcast episode also covered some major leadership musical chairs happening at cancer centers—MD Anderson, Duke, and the University of Florida.
Lastly, this episode takes a sharp turn into the war in Ukraine. A Russian general identified by Ukrainian authorities as being responsible for directing the missile attack on a Kyiv children’s hospital has been shot in Russia.
As Paul says, “When your happiest story in the week is about the assassination of the gentleman in Saratov…That’s the measure of the times we’re in.”
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
- 25 years after 9/11, a smoking cessation program may have curbed lung cancer risk for first responders at Ground Zero
- mRNA vaccine for melanoma is hailed as a turning point in medicine
- Cancer leaders play “musical chairs” as executive jobs fill at top cancer centers
- Russian general tied to bombing Kyiv children’s hospital shot in apparent retribution hit
This podcast says Michael Crane is at Mount Sinai. His full title is professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, medical director of the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health, and medical director of the WTC Health Program at Mount Sinai.
The following is a transcript of this week’s In the Headlines, a weekly series on The Cancer Letter Podcast:
Jacquelyn Cobb: This week on The Cancer Letter podcast.
Paul Goldberg: I think what’s really interesting about this one is that now there is no way in the heck that anyone can predict what FDA is going to do and why and how. It absolutely has become-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh, you mean generally?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. In the past, you could sort of figure it out. Oh, you have no chance here. In this case, I don’t know. I mean, I’m in the fog. And if anybody pretends not to be in the fog, I want to hear from them.
Jacquelyn Cobb: You want to hear from people pretending not to be in the fog?
Paul Goldberg: Pretending to be not… No, explaining to me why they’re not in the fog.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Why they’re not, yes.
Paul Goldberg: Think about it. Here is an agent that is administered into the tumor. If you administer a alcohol into the tumor, the tumor will do strange things and go away or something, or some of them will and some won’t. Who knows? If you administer a knife to a tumor, things will happen as well.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Like a biopsy.
Paul Goldberg: So by itself, that doesn’t mean… So there’s got to be systemic effect, but it’s a single-arm study, and not a large one at that.
You’re listening to The Cancer Letter podcast. The Cancer Letter is a weekly independent magazine covering oncology since 1973. I’m your host, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter.
Jacquelyn Cobb: And I’m your host, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter. We’ll be bringing you the latest stories, groundbreaking research, and critical conversations shaping oncology.
Paul Goldberg: So let’s get going.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Hi, Paul. How are you?
Paul Goldberg: Hi, Jacquelyn. How are you? I hope you had a wonderful summer and did something about your burnout.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I slept a lot. I sat on the couch. It was good. And I looked at a lot of trees, like you suggested. I genuinely took your advice and went out into the forest and I just did some-
Paul Goldberg: Really?
Jacquelyn Cobb: … what is it, forest… Yeah, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: You sat on a stump?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, yes. Well, it was a log. It was horizontal.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, horizontal. Stumps are better. They’re more rooted as a form.
Jacquelyn Cobb: More meditative, yes. Yes.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, more meditative.
Jacquelyn Cobb: How was your break?
Paul Goldberg: It was great. I did a lot of hiking and a lot of walking with dogs in the forests. And also did some biking, but not nearly enough.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I know, I know. There’s always more to do, right?
Paul Goldberg: Oh, God.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. I hate returning, but here we are.
Jacquelyn Cobb: But also, we love it, right?
Paul Goldberg: I also did a bunch of mushroom picking. Since I know mushrooms, so I did a lot of, I mean-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Foraging.
Paul Goldberg: It’s pretty amazing… Yeah, foraging. Not drugs.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. When you said, “I did a bunch of mushroom picking…”
Paul Goldberg: I did a bunch of mushrooms. That’s the Russian way of doing mushrooms, which is you eat them.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Okay, understood.
Paul Goldberg: Yes. Well, the others you eat too, but I-
Jacquelyn Cobb: True.
Paul Goldberg:… don’t know anything about that.
Jacquelyn Cobb: It’s nutritional.
Paul Goldberg: I don’t need to hallucinate.
Jacquelyn Cobb: True. You got it going on anyway. Just kidding.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, I’ve got enough going on with my ears.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Well, I will say, there’s a lot of fun stuff in terms of it is always the Monday morning-itis or whatever coming back on, but our stories from our last week or the last time we published… Or no, it was literally last week. Duh. Geez, my brain is-
Paul Goldberg: Last week.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Last week.
Paul Goldberg: You obviously need to go back into the forest. Maybe that’s the problem. You sat on a log versus a tree stump.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s it.
Paul Goldberg: That was your mistake.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That was the problem. We figured it out. I got to get back in there and sit on a stump.
Paul Goldberg: Go back there. Go back.
Jacquelyn Cobb: But we have some really cool stories to talk about. So I’ll take us through the headlines pretty quickly, but we’re not going to focus on any one story today, so we’re going to just be touching on all of them.
So our cover story was a story by Sara and it’s actually a Cancer History Project podcast as well. So definitely go listen to the whole podcast. But it was a conversation basically as a commemorative check-in 25 years after 9/11 happened. And it was a really interesting story because… Well, actually, you know what? I’m going to pause. That is what we’ll get into later. I’m getting too excited.
Our second story was about the huge news that swept through oncology in August. It was the mRNA vaccine for melanoma meeting its primary endpoint. We don’t necessarily have detailed data on that yet, but it’s really being heralded as this huge exciting-
Paul Goldberg: No, we don’t not necessarily have data. We have no data.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Well, yes, yes, yes, yes. We have a-
Paul Goldberg: We have the top line of the top line of the top line.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, yes, yes. We know that they met their endpoint.
Paul Goldberg: But as far as… No other lines.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Our story three was a Paul special, writing up a musical chairs situation that happened with some cancer center leaders, a lot of moving around-… of top jobs. And then another Paul special-
Paul Goldberg: MD Anderson, Duke, University of Florida.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Just those. No.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: And then our third story, another Paul special, this one was really, really interesting, was about a Russian general who was tied to the bombing of Kiev’s Children’s Hospital, which we wrote about when it happened. And the Russian general was shot in an apparent retribution hit. So that’s a short and concise story, but it is very, very interesting.
So I think that’s where we’ll start. We have some other important news items. Obviously, we have Heidi Overton was selected as FDA commissioner, and there’s some other cancer policies that are important to check out, but we’re going to be focusing on these four stories in a little bit of a rapid-fire round of chatting.
Shall we start with 9/11, Paul?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Yeah, 25 years.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: It’s pretty amazing to think about that. By the way, I have my asthma situation going. That’s why I sound a little like I’ve started smoking. I have not.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, yes, relevant-
Paul Goldberg: Which brings us to the next story.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, yes. So I mean, the really interesting thing about this story, for me, was just the fact that I guess the premise of the story, the push of the story was the idea that after this huge cloud of toxic dust just blanketed New York for, what was it, a month or months?
Paul Goldberg: A long time.
Jacquelyn Cobb: A long time. The intuitive assumption was for worry of lung cancer risk and respiratory problems. And as Sarah talked to, so Michael Crane is the person that she spoke to. He is the medical director at Con Edison, the energy provider for New York City, whose job was to take care of people working at Ground Zero.
Paul Goldberg: But he’s now somewhere else. He’s at Mount Sinai.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, now he’s at Mount Sinai. And the sort of assumption was exactly like I said, the lung cancer risk was going to go up, but 25 years later, that actually doesn’t seem to be how it’s playing out. That’s obviously a lot of caveats there. We’re only, quote unquote, 25 years out. Things can still develop. But the main hypothesis is that the risk of lung cancer caused by the exposure to the World Trade Center toxic exposure was basically curbed by the intense smoking cessation efforts done by Michael Crane and the smoking cessation program. I’m doing a poor job, honestly. It sounds clunky and nuanced, but the way that he talks about it is really incredible.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, it’s cool.
Jacquelyn Cobb: So I’m going to let y’all listen to it right from Michael Crane, this incredible quote right from him.
Michael Crane: The main thing, I mean, they would diligently put the mask on and put the filter on and go off to work and they could breathe comfortably and it was good. Problem was with that dust cloud and what was in it, the filters would clog up within about 30 minutes. So of course we gave extra filters and stuff, but you can’t just hand everybody 10 filters and send them off because with hundreds of people coming out, you run out pretty soon.
So we really started to fall behind on that. People were compensating by, they wear the mask on top of the helmet and sit over their faces or their handkerchief. And I said to them, “Look, come on out. Let’s get you out.” And basically they told me to go jump in the lake very politely. They weren’t going to stop. They had lost friends. As one guy told me, “Doc, I got family in this pile.” They were not going to stop.
And they were also, when you got a little bit too close to it, they were so angry. They were so angry about this event, about what had happened, about the attack, that it was really part of the energy that they were putting into this was a kind of a rage. I mean, they just could not express it in any other way safely, I think, until they worked and worked and worked.
And so they pushed themselves really hard, and a lot of them came back with cough and other World Trade Center syndromes. They would develop asthma-like conditions. They were exposed to this. They should have had better protection and/or they should have come out when the filters ran out, whatever. That wasn’t going to happen. That wasn’t going to happen. The emotional state of these people, they were going to rescue anybody who was alive in that pile. And the hell with their health, they were going to save these people. And it went on like that for as long as the possibility of rescue, and then it actually even intensified a little bit when it became an operation for recovery, recovery of the people who had died.
Jacquelyn Cobb: So yeah, that was a really, really powerful story. And there’s a lot of really powerful pieces of that podcast, the CHP podcast, that didn’t make it into our Cancer Letter story. So definitely go listen to the whole podcast. It’s very emotional and raw and really, really powerful.
I talked the whole time, Paul. Do you have anything you want to talk about with this?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting that the study was focused on first responders.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: And if the idea was to get them to stop smoking, and the numbers are in there, something like 20% of them was prevalence of smoking, it went down to 2%.
Jacquelyn Cobb: 3%. Down to 3%.
Paul Goldberg: 3%. I’m sorry. I’m going by memory. I was only a lowly editor of that story. And for some reason, you’re not seeing the bump in lung cancer, which you would’ve ordinarily, well, you would’ve intuitively wanted to see. So don’t jump to conclusions intuitively with cancer is the moral of that story, among other morals of the story. Also, stop smoking-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Honestly, smoking seems-
Paul Goldberg: … or else you end up sounding like me. Not that I ever have.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I know, I know. Yeah, no, I think that that was such a powerful… There was a really… I’m trying to find a quote. There was one that was just, I think it was a pull quote or… Oh no, it was the subhead. It was, “We seem to have a risk of exposure that needed that extra boost of the cigarette to cause the cancer.” So just that idea of this sort of, in the most negative way possible, synergistic effect of the cigarette exposure and the toxic dust World Trade Center exposure. It was a really, really, really powerful story. But yeah, go listen to it. Nice, short, and sweet.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, it’s worth listening to. It’s definitely worth listening to.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, absolutely.
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Jacquelyn Cobb: Rapid fire onto Merck and Moderna’s mRNA vaccine. Do you want to talk about this at all, Paul, or do you want me to-
Paul Goldberg: No, you go ahead because there’s-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. This is exciting for me.
Paul Goldberg: It’s a lot of excitement, not much data. When the data drops, perhaps there will be a bit more reason for excitement. But you would think that the top line of the top line is accurately stated, in which case, we should be dancing-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, exactly.
Paul Goldberg: … in the streets. And I don’t know.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I feel like this one was really interesting for me just because of my science nerd energy. I feel like this is very much a science nerd story because there’s no data yet. If there’s data, we could bring this into, oh wow, the impact on patients and all this stuff. And that’s hopefully all coming, but right now, this feels very science nerd because it’s really… Here, let me make sure I’m saying this correct. “If these results hold up,” and this is, I’m quoting Claire here, “they will mark a milestone for the field. It’ll be the first positive phase III result for an individualized neoantigen therapy, which is this mRNA therapy, and the first ever phase III success for an mRNA cancer therapy at all.”
So that is really, really interesting to me. And so I think everybody who’s really gung-ho and heart eyes, lovestruck with the idea of precision medicine, I think that this is just really, really exciting for that sort of mindset of we can really target… And that’s what, just for listeners who maybe aren’t as familiar, mRNA therapy is the ultimate targeted therapy. You sequence the patient’s tumor, the patient’s tumor, it’s the ultra, ultra personalized, and you create an mRNA therapy that targets the exact, or loosely targets the exact mutations that the patient actually literally has.
And so it’s somewhat like a targeted therapy. You have BRAF-targeted therapy, for example, that the industry has developed because we know that BRAF is a commonly mutated gene in these cancers. But not all people have BRAF mutations. It’s still very much up to whether a person qualifies or fits the precision medicine options. But this is, no matter what, we can sequence your DNA or the tumor’s DNA and create a medicine for that specific DNA. So that was really, really cool on a science level.
And I think my big thing always with this type of stuff is thinking about access. I always get a little bit… There’s the science nerd heralding so excited, but then of course, I also end up feeling a little bit lamenting that there’s these progress and I wish it could reach everybody right away, but there’s always that sort of-
Paul Goldberg: Well, let’s first see the data.
Jacquelyn Cobb: True, you’re right.
Paul Goldberg: When we see the data, we’ll start talking about access.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Thank you, Paul. Keeping the reins on.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Science nerds are fine. You can cheerlead all you want, but let’s have some data.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Thank you.
Paul Goldberg: I don’t think anybody disagrees with this point, and if they do, they’re not listening to us.
Jacquelyn Cobb: True.
Paul Goldberg: They’re somewhere else.
Jacquelyn Cobb: On that note, Paul, should we talk about cancer center leaders? I can list off what the actual movements were. It was at MD Anderson, Peter WT Pisters retired from his dual role as president and center director. He’s being replaced by Jeffrey E. Lee, who is a surgeon, and he most recently served as senior vice president and chief medical executive and executive vice president and chief physician executive. Quadruple role. And then the other ones are that Pisters’s other role as MD Anderson center director will be replaced by Albert Koong. He is a radiation oncologist who serves as senior vice president and chief scientific officer.
And then separately from MD Anderson, at Duke, David Tuveson, a pancreatic cancer researcher, will become the executive director of Duke Cancer Institute. He’s the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, as well as chief scientist for the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research.
This is crazy listing off these names in a row like this.
Lastly, at the University of Florida, Duane A. Mitchell, brain tumor expert, was named director of the UF Health Cancer Institute at the University of Florida.
So that is a lot. Do you want to talk a little bit about it, Paul? Put some meat on these bones?
Paul Goldberg: It’s interesting because, well, Peter Pisters has been at MD Anderson for over nine years and he’s retiring. It’d be interesting to know what he’s going to do next, because there is something, clearly. We just don’t know what it is. And he is going out. His predecessor, Ron DePinho, is still at MD Anderson. He just went into the faculty.
It’s also interesting that the job became a dual job of director and president. It’s been split into two jobs, but when he came in, that it was one job. When he left, there were two jobs, but he held both of them because his director, Giulio Draetta, had moved on. So now, I was able to get him to tell me because it wasn’t really part of the original release, but Dr. Koong’s coming in as director of the cancer center, which is the person who’s in charge of the CCSG, and Dr. Lee is going to be running… Well, will be the president of the institution. So that’s interesting.
As far as the musical chairs, actually, I think the same thing just happened at Memorial Sloan Kettering. So they split up the job as well. More and more people are splitting up that job because you’re running a multi-billion dollar organization. Can you also be keeping an eye on CCSG? And when do you sleep? Well, you don’t sleep either way.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Exactly.
Paul Goldberg: Even if you split up the job, you don’t sleep. And I guess if it’s one job, you don’t sleep twice as much.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. You create more time somehow. That’s it. These are the people that create time machines to make it work. They’re that smart.
Paul Goldberg: Something needs to happen.
So I guess then the other interesting piece of it is who’s going to come in as Dr. Tuveson’s replacement at Cold Spring Harbor. That’s not been announced yet, so I’m looking forward to hearing who gets that job.
And of course, University of Florida is very, very interesting story as well. So it’s also interesting that we have another African American, Black cancer center director. It’s becoming less uncommon.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: So that’s great news too. So looking forward to learning more and to hosting everybody involved on the directors podcast at this point. Yes. So all the more reason to run the directors [inaudible 00:22:16] and to listen to it. Anyway, looking forward to it.
So another story is we should get to-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh my God, I just did this and I didn’t… That’s a bad joke.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, geez. That’s good.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s a bad joke.
Paul Goldberg: That’s priceless. All right. So when you did these two guns-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, for people not seeing the [inaudible 00:22:46] gun.
Paul Goldberg: It was actually, I think, one gun used. But this dirt bag, is that the right word to use?
Jacquelyn Cobb: I don’t know how you want to… I mean, how can you go against that considering?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, let’s just say dirt bag. It’s a technical term here at The Cancer Letter. It could get worse, but this one deserves worse. There was this general, Russian general, is it Nikolai Varpakhovich? Was that the name?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yep.
Paul Goldberg: Who was, I guess on September 2nd, correct me if I’m wrong, a Ukrainian-
Jacquelyn Cobb: September 3rd, sorry.
Paul Goldberg: September 3rd. I’m wrong. The Ukrainian Security Ministry. Help me with the actual name.
Jacquelyn Cobb: The Security Service of Ukraine.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Decided that, well, published a statement that this guy was in charge of, he’s the head of strategic aviation for Russia. He was in charge of aiming a missile at Okhmatdyt, which is a children’s hospital in Kiev. And we did a pretty massive story on that and actually won an award. And it was astounding. They hit a 120-year-old historical building, and then they skinned, took the entire top layer of the skin of the modern hospital that sits next to it. So there’s tons of children getting cancer treatment. They also hit a maternity hospital while they were at it. So anyway, so this gentleman, shall we say, was accused of this on September 3rd.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Sorry, he was accused of it on August 31st, and then-
Paul Goldberg: August 31st.
Jacquelyn Cobb: … the other thing happened on September 3rd.
Paul Goldberg: My apology. A few days later, was it September what?
Jacquelyn Cobb: September 3rd. That’s September 3rd.
Paul Goldberg: September 3rd. Okay. Had a little off by one there.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Mix up, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: So excuse me, I got to drink my coffee because it helps me with my…
Jacquelyn Cobb: I’m not sure what it helps you with. Is it your voice or your memory?
Paul Goldberg: Well, both are flawed, so I need all the help I could get.
So he is pulling out of it. This is happening 800 kilometers from Moscow in Saratov, I think is the town. He was pulling out of his house and someone on a motorcycle plants two bullets in the gentleman, and one in his head and one in his gut. Now, this is a very important anatomical point. If you want to do harm to a Russian general, do not shoot at his head because there’s nothing there.
Jacquelyn Cobb: This joke has-
Paul Goldberg: Literally. I mean, they literally… He got hit in the head and with a bullet, and apparently his brain was not damaged. What does it say? I’m using the official reports of this. So they flew him to Moscow to deal with his gastrointestinal issues, which is lead poisoning.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh my God. I feel bad. Obviously this man is horrible, but-
Paul Goldberg: This story makes me happy. I don’t know because sometimes the good guys win because anybody who aims a effing missile-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Children’s hospital.
Paul Goldberg: … at a children’s cancer hospital deserves a motorcyclist with a gun. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I support you. I support you.
Paul Goldberg: I love the idea of that press release says that the efforts are being made to bring him to justice. Well, done. Yep. Check.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s the other thing is that this is… And I don’t know a lot about this, Paul. I don’t know if you do right now. But the idea that this is one in a series of Russian commanders to be killed or wounded.
Paul Goldberg: Oh God, yes.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. You want to talk about that a little bit?
Paul Goldberg: Oh God.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Don’t want to put you on the spot.
Paul Goldberg: There’s some occupational hazards in being a Russian general these days.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yep, yep. And just to say, it’s specifically-
Paul Goldberg: Tons.
Jacquelyn Cobb: … in retribution for war crimes.
Paul Goldberg: Right. No, well, I mean, I think they’re actually doing some of them for war crimes. Some of them, they’re more preventative.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh my gosh.
Paul Goldberg: But once you get that certain number of stars or size of stars in the epaulets-
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh my God.
Paul Goldberg: … you become a legitimate target. But that’s the good news. The bad news is Russia has very, very many generals. So it’s a huge population. Managing it is very difficult. We need a lot of motorcycles.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Okay. This has been very, very fun.
Paul Goldberg: But. Is there a but coming now?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Not really a but, honestly. I was going to ask, is there anything else with the story [inaudible 00:28:33]?
Paul Goldberg: It’s honestly in poor taste. Well, yeah, there is actually. The Russians shot a drone soon thereafter right into the window of the office of the head of the security agency in Kiev.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Wow. I didn’t know that.
Paul Goldberg: Violence is not a good thing usually. And sooner this idiocy ends, the better. But there are lots of idiocies going on right now in the world, and this is one of them, and it’s bloody and stupid.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, agreed. Agreed.
Paul Goldberg: And I don’t know.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I know. Well, we really ran the gamut today in terms of tone and topic.
Paul Goldberg: Poor taste.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Poor taste. I get it, I get it.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. We’ve been talking about smoking cigarettes.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Smoking, murder.
Paul Goldberg: And smoking Russian generals.
Jacquelyn Cobb: There you go.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: But I think that’s it for me, Paul. Is there anything else you want to put a cherry on top at all?
Paul Goldberg: No.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Hard to do with such a-
Paul Goldberg: I have no cheerful thoughts at the end of this week.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Okay. Well-
Paul Goldberg: When your happiest story in the week is about the assassination of the gentleman in Saratov.
Jacquelyn Cobb: What does that say?
Paul Goldberg: That’s the measure of the times we’re in.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes, that is true. That is true.
Paul Goldberg: That’s happy news.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Yes, okay. That is crazy. Wow. Okay, well, on that happy note, listeners, I realized also, just as a sidebar-
Paul Goldberg: You’re doing it again.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I got to keep my thumbs down. I’ll just use my pointer fingers.
Paul Goldberg: I don’t know what you’re doing. No, it’s the wrong finger.
Jacquelyn Cobb: But for listeners, I wanted to say I’ve noticed that I have said, I think every single week that, “Listeners, I’ll see you next week.” I realized this over the break that I think I’ve been doing that the entire time I’ve been podcasting. So watchers, viewers-
Paul Goldberg: You’ve been really-
Jacquelyn Cobb: … I’ll see you next week. Listeners, you will hear me next week. That’s what [inaudible 00:30:57].
Paul Goldberg: Oh my God. So you’ve been sitting on that log, thinking deep thoughts for three weeks, and this is the best you can give us? Jeez.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Sadly, yes.
Paul Goldberg: Thanks for that. You should be sitting on a tree stump like they do in my country because it’s more rooted.
Jacquelyn Cobb: More rooted.
Paul Goldberg: It’s rotten, but it’s rooted. And be careful because of the ants, the fire ants.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s true, that’s true.
Okay. Listeners, I will not subject you to any more of this. Goodbye.
Paul Goldberg: Bye.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh my God, Paul.
Thank you for joining us on The Cancer Letter podcast, where we explore the stories shaping the future of oncology. For more in-depth reporting and analysis, visit us at cancerletter.com. With over 200 site license subscriptions, you may already have access through your workplace. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and share. Together, we’ll keep the conversation going.
Paul Goldberg: Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and thank you for listening.
