I have watched the rhetoric and heated debate about screening at age 40, now 45, and 50 for 25 years and am miffed that the discussion consistently ignores the obvious things we can do to save lives.
Emma Whitehead was a six-year-old girl battling relapsed leukemia for the third time when her parents were told she had run out of treatments. Her doctors offered one last hope—enrollment in a clinical trial at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in a completely new immunotherapy. It was a phase I toxicity trial for both children and adult patients, and few patients on phase I trials are ever cured. But Emma's family was given the miracle they had prayed for. Five years later, Emma is now a happy, healthy, 11-year-old girl who likes to play piano and soccer. Emma is cured.
Almost one year ago (on April 30, 2014), House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), along with Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) announced the launch of 21st Century Cures, an initiative aimed at accelerating the pace of cures and medical breakthroughs in the United States by ensuring that our laws are keeping pace with innovation.
When the Lung Master Protocol clinical trial (Lung-MAP or S1400) (1) was launched in June 2014, the goal of this first-of-its kind trial was simple: find effective treatments for seriously ill patients suffering from a specific type of lung cancer.
The recent announcement by the Innovation Center at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding the launch of an Oncology Care Model is an important step toward patient-centered cancer care.
This week the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a proposed rule stating that the scientific evidence was sufficient to support reimbursement for counseling on the risks and benefits of lung cancer screening as well as lung cancer screening with low dose computed tomography in high risk individuals and once per year. CMS will pay for such services when provided to beneficiaries at high risk for lung cancer and when provided by physicians and centers with specific qualifications.
The nation's academic cancer centers are a national resource that will increase in value as remarkable changes continue in biomedical research, cancer care, and health policy.
In America, cutting-edge inventions are seen as the gateway to the future. However, the hazard of credulously accepting new technology into medical practice was warned against in a 2008 Journal of the American Medical Association editorial “Gizmo Idolatry.”
Following our discovery that my wife's occult uterine cancer was morcellated using a gynecological power morcellator, we initiated a vigorous campaign to protect others from this avoidable harm. It is now increasingly clear that one in 350-500 women with symptomatic fibroids have occult or missed uterine cancer lurking in what a majority of gynecological surgeons have assumed to be benign tumors.
We are facing a disturbing paradox in science. We have unprecedented potential for advancements spurred by current technologies. But at the same time we are confronting flat to declining funding.
