This week, the USPSTF issued its draft guidelines for prostate cancer screening. They propose shifting from task force's recommendation against routine prostate cancer screening to a recommendation for informed and shared decision-making in which the physician and patient discuss the real risks of harm and the potential for life saving benefit before deciding on screening.
Oncologists must confront end-of-life issues on a nearly daily basis. Our approach to the potential death of a patient may change over time, however, depending on the patients' diagnosis and stage, where those patients are in their treatment plan, and, of course, what the patients' wishes are. When feasible, our primary goal is to prevent death from cancer, and when we cannot achieve that, we try to delay death as long as we can. When dying seems inevitable, we do our best to make it as comfortable as possible.
Many cancer center hospital systems are expanding their services across large geographic regions, while cancer care is consolidating around ever enlarging groups.
Announcing the NCI Formulary, the Jan. 13 issue of The Cancer Letter includes comments suggesting the road to new therapies will now get “easier” and other comments indicated that industry and/or NCI collaborators will “not provide support other than drug access”.
For nearly a half century, much of the “war on cancer” has been fought at NCI-designated cancer centers, the 69 major medical schools and free-standing research institutes have this designation.
Kudos to The Cancer Letter's report on the 803 PD-1 or PD-L1 trials. As Rick Pazdur noted, that is just too many resources chasing the same idea for adult cancer studies.
Vice President Joe Biden's National Cancer Moonshot Initiative has touched off an unprecedented national and international dialogue about cancer.
“And I believe we need a moonshot in this country to cure cancer.”
April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power facility accident in the former Soviet Union. Soon after the accident, I received a call from the Soviet ambassador to the U.S. on behalf of Mikhail Gorbachev asking me to come immediately to Moscow.
Over the past century, we have had many wars on cancer, and now we have a national “moonshot” to be spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden, announced in President Barack Obama's Jan. 12 State of the Union Address.
