HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - statistic on chemo....only helps 1/4 of us??

Lani · 08-01-2011, 05:39 AM

whatever the statistic, I think you are making the mistake of lumping all breast cancer together to come up with a number.

"Breast cancer " is many different diseases, with many different prognoses and each responding differently to any given treatment

Dr. Slamon has said that if herceptin had been tested in all"breast cancer" they would not have noted statistically significant improvement with its use and it would never have been approved. It is only becasue a test had been developed which enabled the researchers to find the group of bc patients in whom it proved effective (her2 testing, FISH better than IHC) that we discovered its remarkable effect and even so, it doesn't work for all her2+s and when given in Stage Ivs the majority recur within one to two years. By your reasoning, that a reason not to give it and that nihilisitic approach would keep them from discovering why it doesn't work on everyone and why recurrences occur and prevent researchers from discovering the best combination of treatments including herceptin and better "herceptins"

All are going to die of something someday, so why do we try to treat illnesses? To relieve pain and suffering and someday to beat them, I would propose.

Many more get treated now than treatments can help, but only in so doing and studying what makes each patients' results different will we discover the best treatment which is the most specific so everyone will have the greatest chance of being cured with the least chance of side-effects, overtreatment and undertreatment.

08-01-2011, 05:39 AM	#4
Lani Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 4,778	Re: statistic on chemo....only helps 1/4 of us?? whatever the statistic, I think you are making the mistake of lumping all breast cancer together to come up with a number. "Breast cancer " is many different diseases, with many different prognoses and each responding differently to any given treatment Dr. Slamon has said that if herceptin had been tested in all"breast cancer" they would not have noted statistically significant improvement with its use and it would never have been approved. It is only becasue a test had been developed which enabled the researchers to find the group of bc patients in whom it proved effective (her2 testing, FISH better than IHC) that we discovered its remarkable effect and even so, it doesn't work for all her2+s and when given in Stage Ivs the majority recur within one to two years. By your reasoning, that a reason not to give it and that nihilisitic approach would keep them from discovering why it doesn't work on everyone and why recurrences occur and prevent researchers from discovering the best combination of treatments including herceptin and better "herceptins" All are going to die of something someday, so why do we try to treat illnesses? To relieve pain and suffering and someday to beat them, I would propose. Many more get treated now than treatments can help, but only in so doing and studying what makes each patients' results different will we discover the best treatment which is the most specific so everyone will have the greatest chance of being cured with the least chance of side-effects, overtreatment and undertreatment.