New Drug Shows Dramatic Results, Much Promise in Lung Cancer Trial
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by Michael John Scott
A treatment that boosts the immune system greatly improved survival in people newly diagnosed with the most common form of lung cancer, the AP reports. This is an absolute first in the health industry and offers significant promise to cancer patients everywhere.
What’s interesting is this or a similar drug was originally developed by the Cuban Ministry of Public Health in the 1990s, and has undergone several animal and human clinical trials in Cuba, and is currently licensed there for stage IIIB/IV non-small-cell lung cancer. The drug, which costs $100,000 in the United States, is available for as little as $860 in the island nation. This huge discrepancy should surprise no one, as in America the priority is not on saving lives, but making certain the drug manufacturers make as much as they can in the process. That is the priority.
In the study, Merck’s Keytruda, given with chemotherapy, cut in half the risk of dying or having cancer worsen, compared to chemo alone after nearly one year. The results are expected to quickly set a new standard of care for about 70,000 patients each year in the United States whose lung cancer has already spread by the time it’s found.
Keytruda was approved last year as an initial treatment with chemo for the most common form of advanced lung cancer, but doctors have been leery to use it because that was based on a small study that did not show whether it prolongs life.
The new study, led by Dr. Leena Gandhi of NYU’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, gives that proof. In it, 616 patients were given chemo and some also received Keytruda. Those not given Keytruda were allowed to switch to it if their cancer worsened.
After one year, 69 percent of people originally assigned to Keytruda were alive versus 49 percent of the others—a result that experts called remarkable considering that the second group’s survival was improved because half of them wound up switching.
How much it ultimately will extend life isn’t known—more than half in the Keytruda group are still alive; median survival was just over 11 months for the others.
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I recently talked to a woman who has lung cancer and has had surgery and radiation treatment. She’s on Keytruda and apparently has survived considerably longer so far- than she otherwise would have.
Immunotherapy has been in the works for quite a while and it should be remembered that despite false claims of a “Cuban Vaccine” being suppressed by “Big Pharma” there is no Cuban vaccine, only a very similar immune therapy that has showed some results in humans and animals. Whether Keytruda is similar or the same or quite different, I don’t know, but I remember that it’s a product of “Big Pharma” and enormously expensive to develop, test and bring to market. They still get lung cancer in Cuba and at high rates since people smoke more.
The problem with traditional Liberal targets is that although they are not above criticism, they are targets of convenience for a society that needs scapegoats so very badly.